Op  THf,        *" 

UN/VEKsm 


OUTRE-MER 


OUTRE-MER 


IMPRESSIONS    OF   AMERICA 


BY 

PAUL   BOURGET 

v 

MEMBER  OF  THE  FRENCH  ACADEMY 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
1896 


COPYRIGHT  1894,   1895 
BY  JAMES  GORDON  BENNETT 


Norfooot) 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  — Berwick  &  Smith. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


I.   AT  SEA .     .  '     i 

II.   THE  FIRST  WEEK .  18 

III.  SOCIETY 43 

A  Summer  City 43 

IV.  SOCIETY 71 

Women  and  Young  Girls 71 

V.   BUSINESS  MEN  AND  BUSINESS  SCENES no 

VI.   THE  LOWER  ORDERS 159 

The  Workingmen 159 

Farmers  and  Cowboys 228 

VII.   EDUCATION 276 

VIII.   AMERICAN  PLEASURES 326 

IX.   DOWN  SOUTH 371 

In  Georgia 371 

X.   DOWN  SOUTH 402 

In  Florida 402 

XI.   HOMEWARD 414 

v 


227712 


OUTRE-MER 


AT   SEA 

ON  BOARD  THE ,  AUGUST,  1893. 

THE  enormous  ship  —  it  has  three  funnels,  a  displacement 
of  ten  thousand  tons,  and  an  average  speed  of  five  hundred 
miles  a  day —  is  ploughing  the  broad  ocean  Under  full  head 
way.  An  August  afternoon  sky  broods  over  the  Atlantic  with 
its  autumn  clouds.  It  is  like  a  flat  gray  lid,  beneath  which, 
tirelessly,  monotonously,  the  waters  heave  and  swell.  The 
dull  gray  waves,  opaque  as  the  sky,  rise  up,  tower  aloft,  and 
then  come  crashing  down.  For  a  second,  as  each  uprears 
itself,  the  thin  ruffled  crest  shines  green,  a  fringe  of  foam 
plays  along  it,  white  and  undulating.  Then  the  wavering 
crest  gives  way,  the  emerald  wall  crashes  down  in  a  heavy 
mass  of  brackish  water  under  the  swelling  of  another  wave. 
There  are  thousands  upon  thousands  of  them,  heaving,  rag 
ing,  clashing  in  a  frenzy  as  of  a  resounding  battle;  over  it 
sometimes  a  bird  flies  with  outspread  wings,  black  against  the 
gray  sky,  seeking  its  prey  in  the  wind  and  tempest.  The 
mighty  ship  ploughs  through  the  terrific  heaving  of  the  sea, 
without  either  pitching  or  rolling.  So  steady  is  the  deck  that 
it  would  seem  like  a  weird  nightmare  but  for  the  ceaseless 
quivering  of  its  metal  frame. 


OUTRE-MER 

greyhounds."  It  deserves  the  felicitous  epithet  as  much  by  its 
proportions  and  the  elegance  of  the  lines  which  define  the 
slender  contour  of  its  colossal  hull  as  by  its  prodigious  speed. 
Only  a  few  hours  ago,  we  started,  and  already  the  coast  of 
Ireland  is  fading  away,  losing  itself  in  the  leaden  rim  of  the 
cloudy  dome  which  encircles  the  horizon.  A  few  more  turns 
of  the  double  screw,  and  for  a  whole  week  we  shall  have 
around  us  only  the  unfathomable  waves,  and  beyond  them  the 
New  World. 

How  it  draws  me  —  that  New  World,  and  for  reasons  no 
doubt  far  enough  removed  from  those  which  are  attracting  my 
fellow-travellers.  The  flag  that  floats  above  us  bears  upon  its 
white  field  the  spread  eagle  of  the  United  States.  The  ship 
is  American,  and  so  are  most  of  my  fellow-travellers.  Hav 
ing  decided  once  again  to  quit  France,  I  preferred  to  cut  the 
thread  at  once,  and  here  I  am  already  in  Yankee  land.  I  hear 
only  English  on  this  deck,  —  a  nasal  English  in  which  the  word 
"well "  takes  the  place  of  the  word  "yes,"  and  recurs  continu 
ally.  It  has  already  behooved  me  to  change  my  French  money 
and  to  learn  without  delay  that  the  unit  of  expenditure  has 
leaped  from  the  franc  to  the  dollar;  in  other  words,  is  quin 
tupled.  These  are  the  first  two  evidences  of  expatriation, 
and  the  next  is  the  indescribable  insolence  of  the  ship's  ser 
vants,  or  rather  of  the  help.  For  have  I  not  long  known  that 
there  are  no  servants  in  the  United  States?  Not  one  of  my 
neighbors,  who  to  the  number  of  a  hundred  or  so  are  enjoying 
the  air  on  long  folding-chairs,  has  probably  observed  these 
trifles;  but  for  the  foreigner  they  are  like  the  little  shiver 
that  thrills  through  the  swimmer  as  he  makes  the  first  plunge. 
However  accustomed  one  may  be  to  what  the  tragical  and 
restless  Maupassant  used  to  call  "the  errant  life,"  there  is  in 
the  sudden  leap  from  any  "home  "  a  vague  sensation  of  melan 
choly.  Or  rather  —  for  that  is  a  pretty  large  word  for  a 
simple  contraction  of  the  nerves  —  it  is  rather  an  involuntary 


AT  SEA  3 

impulse  to  draw  back.  The  thousand  inconveniences  of  the 
uprooting  rise  up  before  you,  and  you  ask  yourself,  "Why  this 
new  journey?  What  am  I  crossing  the  ocean  to  seek,  far  from 
my  friends,  my  books,  the  familiar  scenes  of  the  land  where  I 
grew  up?  "  Alas!  it  is  no  longer  that  land  that  is  fading  away 
yonder  into  the  mist,  for  the  name  of  this  coast  is  Cape  Clear 
Island.  Never  mind,  that  Irish  island  belonged  to  Europe, 
after  all.  That  lighthouse  which  has  just  been  kindled  is  no 
doubt  heralding  the  arrival  home  to  other  travellers,  who  for 
one  reason  or  another  have  already  gone  through  the  experi 
ence  upon  which  I  am  entering.  When,  eight  or  ten  months 
hence,  if  God  wills,  I  see  again  that  point  of  land,  that  light 
flashing  out  against  the  sky,  shall  I  have  brought  back  from 
beyond  the  sea  a  rich  harvest  of  ideas  and  memories?  Shall 
I  be  telling  myself  then  that  I  was  wrong  in  again  exiling 
myself  for  so  long  a  time,  or  shall  I  say  that  I  was  right? 

To  the  two  questions  of  afterwards  I  cannot  yet  make 
answer,  but  I  see  clearly  my  reply  to  the  two  former,  the 
questions  of  beforehand.  What  America  has  to  give  me  I  do 
not  know.  What  I  expect  from  her  I  know  very  well,  and 
I  should  like  to  sketch  in  a  few  lines  upon  the  opening 
pages  of  my  journal  a  sort  of  programme,  an  intellectual  self- 
examination. 

When  I  come  to  revise  my  notes,  it  will  make  the  best  of 
prefaces  for  them,  I  think;  and  it  is  also  the  best  way  of 
beguiling  the  weariness  of  the  steamer,  that  sensation  of  days 
at  once  long  and  empty,  which  from  the  experience  of  eastern 
sea-faring  I  know  only  too  well.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
time  at  sea,  —  no  distribution  of  hours,  no  small  divisions  of 
life.  One  is  as  if  cradled,  rocked  by  a  mighty  power  which 
suppresses  you,  in  which  you  will  melt  away.  The  infinitely 
littles  of  sea-faring  life,  vague  dreams  of  things  seen  only  in 
their  large  outlines,  are  all  that  come  to  help  you  to  while 
away  these  mornings  and  afternoons  of  languid  vegetation.  I 


4  OUTRE-MER 

shall  try  two  remedies,  and  I  begin  with  the  second,  which 
accords  only  too  well  with  the  dominant  passion  of  my  mind, 
with  my  fancy  —  my  mania,  almost  —  for  gathering  thousands 
of  scattered  facts  into  the  brief  limits  of  a  formula.  Well,  the 
wolf  will  always  show  himself  wolf,  saith  the  sage.  That  is 
just  a  way  of  thinking,  of  looking  at  things,  and  it  must  have 
its  uses  as  well  as  its  limitations.  In  any  case,  it  is  my  own 
particular  kind  of  impressionism,  and  I  can  be  sincere  only 
by  yielding  to  it,  begging,  in  advance,  the  reader's  pardon 
for  this  abuse  of  abstract  reflection. 

"Expatriation,"  I  wrote  just  now.  How  harsh  the  word  is, 
and  how  false  it  rings !  In  all  my  journeyings  I  have  felt, 
and  I  feel  still  more  strongly  now,  that  one  can  never  be  ex 
patriated.  \  However  far  he  may  be  from  his  native  land  or 
from  any  land,  he  has  only  to  retire  into  his  innermost  con 
sciousness  to  find  himself  citizen  not  of  the  world,  but  of  that 
little  corner  of  it  from  which  he  came.  What  draws  me  to 
America  is  not  America,  but  Europe  and  France;  it  is  the 
disquietude  of  the  problems  in  which  the  future  of  Europe 
and  France  is  hidden.  Three  powers  are  at  work  to-day  to 
hew  out  that  future;  three  divinities,  with  hands  as  stern  and 
inexorable  as  those  of  the  Parcse,  whose  sovereignty  over  all 
the  interests  and  enterprises  of  the  Old  World  it  behooves  us 
to  recognize.  The  first  is  Democracy;  the  second  is  Science; 
the  third,  the  last  to  appear  and  the  least  easy  to  name,  is  the 
idea  of  Race.  Turn  to  whatever  remotest  corner  of  the  con 
tinent  you  may,  from  St.  Petersburg  to  London,  from  Rome 
to  Paris,  you  shall  find  these  three  powers  at  work,  busy 
in  moulding  the  lineaments  of  a  new  world,  —  so  at  least  their 
devotees  assert,  —  busy  in  destroying,  piece  by  piece,  the 
antique  edifice  which  for  ages  has  sheltered  human  life,  and, 
say  their  adversaries,  without  building  up  anything  to  replace 
it.  And  the  latter  have  no  difnculty  in  showing  us  what  sort 


AT  SEA  5 

of  a  Europe  these  new  divinities  have  made,  how  sinister  it 
is,  how  different  from  that  of  which  our  fathers  dreamed, 
when,  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  they  hailed  with  a  shout 
of  confiding  hope  the  dawn  of  the  Revolution.  Universal 
suffrage,  —  that  is  to  say,  the  imbecile  tyranny  of  numbers,  the 
reign  of  force  in  its  blindest  and  most  unjust  form,  —  this  is 
the  regime  which  Democracy  has  established  wherever  it  has 
triumphed.  To  this  it  has  added  the  clamorous  awakening 
of  the  lower  appetites,  a  universal  discontent  with  one's  lot, 
and  the  constant  menace  of  a  revolt  of  the  fourth  estate,  of 
poverty  and  envy,  against  a  civilization  which  promised  to 
give  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,  and  which  has  gone 
bankrupt  of  all  its  unrealizable  promises. 

The  positive  benefit  bestowed  by  Science  is  a  more  adroit 
treatment  of  nature,  known  at  last  with  precision ;  but  it  is 
dearly  bought,  if  it  be  true  that  philosophical  nihilism  is  the 
last  outcome  of  this  gigantic  attempt  to  ask  questions  that 
have  no  possible  solution.  Brought  face  to  face  with  the 
Unknowable,  and  constrained  to  acknowledge  that  its  method 
is  powerless  ever  to  reach  the  causes  that  lie  back  of  phenom 
ena  and  the  substance  that  lies  behind  accidental  circum 
stance,  what  aliment  can  Science  give  the  soul,  except  the 
bread  of  bitterness  and  the  waters  of  death?  Developing  to 
the  highest  degree  in  the  man  of  to-day  the  spirit  of  experi 
ment  and  of  criticism,  it  has  made  faith  in  the  supernatural 
almost  impossible  to  an  innumerable  multitude  of  average 
consciences,  and  it  is  the  sum  of  the  average  consciences  that 
makes  what  we  call  the  national  conscience.  Hence,  what  a 
loss  of  the  Ideal  in  contemporary  Europe !  What  uncertainty 
of  conviction,  and,  as  a  natural  consequence,  what  incoherent 
feebleness  of  will,  what  weakening  of  character,  what  ill- 
regulated  energy,  what  moral  maladies,  forever  recurring  in 
ever-new  complications,  in  these  last  years  of  this  end  of  a 
century,  which  has  so  longed  to  do  well ! 


6  OUTRE-MER 

And,  finally,  the  idea  of  Race,  which  amid  the  gun-flashes 
of  Solferino  seemed  so  generous,  so  logical, —  into  what  a 
menace  of  barbarism  it  has  resolved  itself,  now  that  the  very 
Europe  which  gave  herself  to  progress  is  only  a  succession 
of  fortified  camps,  where  thousands  of  men  wait  beside  their 
loaded  cannon  for  the  hour  of  such  an  extermination  as  his 
tory  has  never  yet  known ! 

Yes,  this  is  the  evident  task  of  these  three  direful  and 
merciless  toilers,  whom  it  is  nevertheless  vain  to  ban.  For  in 
the  grand,  irresistible  forces  of  society,  as  in  those  of  nature, 
there  is  a  character  of  fatality  which  is  just  so  far  sacred. 
Lying  beyond  the  foresight  and  control  of  man,  they  appear 
to  us  as  mysterious  emanations  of  the  very  principle  from 
which  all  reality  flows.  All  that  is  irresistible  and  illimitable 
in  them  commands  our  acquiescence,  as  birth  and  death  com 
mand  it,  as  day  and  night,  or  as  this  sea,  whose  waves  beat 
upon  this  vessel  on  which  I  write  these  lines.  In  presence 
of  such  a  necessity  despair  is  impossible,  until  one  has  cal 
culated  all  the  chances  of  a  happier  future;  that  is  to  say, 
until  one  has  made  certain  that  the  effects  produced  by  these 
implacable  causes  are  always  the  same. 

Now  one  country  has  been  found  where  these  three  forces, 
so  destructive  in  our  old  world,  have  been  called  upon  to  con 
struct,  out  of  whole  cloth,  a  new  universe.  This  country  was 
a  democracy  from  the  very  beginning,  and  a  scientific  democ 
racy,  because  to  conquer  this  virgin  soil  it  was  necessary  to 
make  use  of  the  most  modern  machines  and  methods  of  indus 
try.  It  was  a  country  upon  which  the  race  problem  was  forced 
at  its  very  origin,  and  against  which  it  still  continually  brings 
up,  being  formed  of  the  alluvium  of  all  the  nations  of  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa,  and  forced  to  make  it  possible  not  only  for 
Englishmen  to  live  with  Irishmen,  and  Germans  with  French 
men,  but  yellow  and  black  men  with  men  of  white  skins. 

Up  to  the  present  time  it  appears  to  have  succeeded.     Every 


AT  SEA  7 

year  its  population  augments,  its  riches  increase,  its  cities 
grow,  with  the  energy  of  tropical  plants.  Forty  years  ago, 
what  was  St.  Louis,  or  St.  Paul,  or  Minneapolis?  what  was 
Chicago  itself?  To-day,  the  inhabitants  of  those  cities  of 
yesterday  are  counted  by  the  hundred  thousand,  two  hundred 
thousand,  five  hundred  thousand;  and  this  year  the  most 
surprising  one  of  them  all  has  opened  an  Exposition  to  which 
the  whole  world  was  invited  —  and  the  whole  world  has  gone ! 
An  army  of  twenty-five  thousand  men  suffices  this  people,  who 
yet,  less  than  thirty  years  ago,  proved  that  military  energy  was 
as  abundant  among  them  as  all  other  forms  of  energy;  and 
then,  the  struggle  ended,  they  returned  to  the  occupations  of 
peace  with  the  same  rapidity  with  which  they  had  organized 
the  formidable  machinery  of  war.  How  can  one  know  of  the 
existence  of  such  a  nation,  and  not  be  curious  to  study  the 
conditions  of  its  existence  elsewhere  than  in  books?  How 
lose  an  opportunity  to  estimate  upon  the  spot  the  worth  of 
this  society,  which  claims  to  be  that  of  the  future,  and  which, 
in  any  case,  is  one  of  the  possibilities  of  the  future?  I  be 
lieve  that  I  am  aware  in  advance  of  all  that  will  shock  me  in 
this  country,  where  the  poetry  of  a  past  is  wanting,  —  I  who 
have  so  loved  Italy,  Greece,  Syria,  and  their  soil,  half  formed 
of  the  dust  of  the  dead.  I  know  that  I  shall  not  find  among 
them  those  of  my  own  mind  and  heart.  But  where  would  I 
not  go,  or  to  whom,  in  the  hope  of  getting  back  a  little  faith 
in  the  future  of  civilization,  which,  among  us,  seems  upon 
the  point  of  sinking  into  irreparable  ruin? 

I  have  let  five  days  pass  since  the  afternoon  of  our  depart 
ure,  when  I  tried  my  powers  at  that  sort  of  mental  balance 
sheet,  which  it  is  good  to  draw  up  in  the  first  and  last  hours 
of  a  long  journey.  During  the  journey  itself,  one  must  give 
oneself  up  to  the  present  sensation.  The  writer  must  make 
use  of  his  general  impressions,  in  the  way  that  the  painter 


8  OUTRE-MER 

utilizes  the  walls  of  his  studio.  He  hangs  upon  them  the 
studies  which  at  once  hide  and  are  sustained  by  them.  Dur 
ing  these  five  days,  therefore,  I  have  done  my  best  to  forget 
my  theories,  as  I  hope  to  forget  them  during  the  months  to 
come;  and  I  have  given  myself  up  to  steamer  life,  which  is 
always  the  same  in  all  climates  and  on  all  seas.  Neverthe 
less,  looking  at  it  more  closely,  this  ship  is  already  a  bit  of 
America,  and  one  who  is  keen-sighted  in  manners  could 
easily  distinguish  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  national  tone,  that 
ineffaceable  little  sign  which  every  people  imprints  upon  its 
own  physiognomy.  Who  has  ever  quitted  a  steamer  of  the 
Peninsular  Company,  the  classic  P.  and  O.  of  Egypt  and 
India,  for  a  vessel  of  the  Messageries,  without  feeling  that  all 
England  is  in  the  one  and  all  France  in  the  other,  just  as  all 
Italy  is  in  the  between-decks  of  one  of  the  Florios,  which 
coast  from  Genoa  to  Patrasso?  But  one  discerns  these  shades 
of  difference  only  when  one  already  knows  the  peoples. 

Here,  at  all  events,  is  a  sketch  of  some  of  the  pictures 
which  I  shall  carry  away  with  me  from  this  voyage,  now  so 
soon  to  end.  We  have  made  such  good  time  that,  having  left 
Southampton  on  Saturday  afternoon,  we  shall  be  in  New  York 
to-morrow  —  Friday  —  evening,  notwithstanding  that  the  sea 
has  rudely  assailed  us  at  certain  times,  notably  at  that  middle 
point  of  ocean  which  sailors  call  the  "devil's  hole,"  and 
although,  at  the  very  moment  when  I  resume  my  journal,  the 
fog  is  thickening  over  a  sea  so  smooth  that  it  barely  shows  a 
ripple.  A  ground  swell  lifts  it  in  a  large,  slow  undulation, 
while  the  ship  is  veiled  in  a  soft,  white  mist,  so  dense  that 
from  one  end  of  it  persons  and  things  at  the  other  seem  to 
melt  together  in  a  vague,  spectral  shimmer.  Moment  by 
moment  the  whistle  rends  the  fog  with  its  strident  call,  but 
the  speed  of  our  course  is  not  lessened  by  a  single  knot. 

"It  is  safer,"  says  one  of  my  table  companions.  "In  case 
of  collision,  the  swiftest  vessel  always  cuts  down  the  other," 


AT   SEA  9 

And  first  this  upper  deck,  on  which  I  have  passed  so  many 
hours,  while  the  waves,  beaten  by  the  wind,  sprinkled  it  with 
their  salty  spray;  let  me  once  more  bring  before  my  eyes  the 
two  passages  along  the  cabins,  with  their  lines  of  close- 
crowded  steamer  chairs.  There  men  and  women  passed  their 
days,  reading,  conversing,  lounging,  sleeping;  the  colors  of 
their  plaids,  the  intermingling  of  green  and  yellow,  red  and 
black,  bringing  out  the  brightness  or  the  blemishes  of  their 
faces.  To  my  fancy,  these  faces,  young  and  old,  which  every 
morning  I  found  in  the  same  place,  were  like  enigmas  of 
race,  in  which,  with  a  singular  curiosity,  I  amused  myself 
with  searching  the  not-to-be-attested  heredities,  all  the  various 
elements  which  have  been  fused  together  in  that  Corinthian 
brass,  the  American  race.  In  all  this  crowd  there  was  nothing 
of  the  clean-cut  outline  which  distinguishes  the  physiognomy 
of  almost  all  Englishmen,  clear,  heavy,  distinct,  like  their 
printing.  Instead  of  this  were  countenances  so  dissimilar, 
and  physiques  so  contradictory,  that  one  could  easily  detect 
in  them  all  the  (different  atavisms  of  which  the  United  States 
is.  the  synthesis.  This  square-shouldered  personage,  with 
hands  heavy  as  beetles  and  feet  like  the  base  of  a  column, 
who  smokes  great  cigars  with  a  strong  inspiration  of  the 
breath,  and  whose  small  eyes  flash  through  their  spectacles 
with  an  expression  at  once  shrewd  and  kindly,  do  I  need  to 
be  told  that  his  name  ends  in  mann,  and  that  he  is  returning 
to  Chicago,  before  I  can  be  sure  that  he  is  German,  or  a  son 
of  Germany?  This  other,  with  the  nervous  gayety  of  his  deep 
blue  eyes,  his  red  beard,  his  excited  gestures,  the  evident 
ail-but  of  his  dress,  how  can  I  doubt  that  he  is  Irish,  or  a 
son  of  Ireland?  This  third,  with  his  too  black  eyes,  set  in  a 
spare,  thin,  olive-tinted  mask,  how  indisputably  Spanish,  the 
living  silhouette  of  some  Californian  adventurer ! 

And  then,  beside  these  faces,  with  their  clearly  defined 
chajacter,  there  are  others  in  which  five  or  six  different  types 


10  OUTRE-MER 

have  blended, —  faces  heavy  and  colorless,  deeply  marked 
with  lines  that  tell  of  struggle.  They  smile,  and  in  the  very 
act  of  smiling  they  remain  austere,  almost  bitter,  as  if  the 
labors  and  pains  of  more  than  one  generation  had  left  their 
impress  upon  them.  Many  of  the  women,  and  very  pretty 
ones,  talk  familiarly  with  both  classes.  Among  them  are 
several  actresses,  returning  to  their  native  country  after  a  tour 
in  England.  I  picture  to  myself  the  gallantries,  actual  or 
prospective,  which  such  travelling  intimacies  would  imply  on 
a  boat  belonging  to  a  Latin  country.  In  the  present  case,  the 
contrary  impression  prevails;  here  are  crude  manners  on  a 
basis  of  energy  and  determination,  as  ours  are  based  on  pleas 
ure  or  wit.  It  is  all  symbolized  in  the  courage,  hardihood, 
persistence  with  which,  ever  since  setting  sail,  and  whatever 
the  mutations  of  the  sea,  many  of  the  young  women  have  per 
sisted  in  pacing  the  deck  with  steady  steps;  while  a  group  of 
young  fellows  and  older  men  played  cricket  on  the  forward 
deck,  in  driving  spray  or  drenching  rain. 

"  My  brother  is  not  comfortable  if  he  has  not  two  hours  of 
hard  exercise  every  day,"  a  young  girl  said  to  me,  looking  up 
from  her  diligent  reading  of  a  review  article  on  Physical  Cul 
ture. 

The  dining-room,  also,  rises  up  before  my  eyes,  with  the 
barbaric  luxury  of  its  new  gilding  and  the  humming  of  voices 
around  the  tables.  From  the  hour  of  our  departure  the  abun 
dance  of  food  has  kept  pace  with  the  barbaric  luxury,  with  its 
twenty-five  dishes  for  breakfast,  luncheon,  or  dinner.  I  had 
often  heard  of  American  wastefulness.  I  became  aware  of 
it  three  times  a  day,  in  face  of  this  prodigality  of  food,  which 
conjured  up  visions  of  oxen,  sheep,  and  pigs  hanging  up  by 
the  score  in  refrigerating  rooms  between  decks,  heaps  of  fish 
in  other  ice-boxes,  and  a  provision  of  milk  products  and  fruits 
enough  to  last  through  a  siege. 


AT   SEA  11 

The  distance  between  me  and  the  land  of  the  vine  was  evi 
dent  enough  merely  from  seeing  how  those  who  devoured 
these  things  washed  down  their  food.  Whiskey,  ale,  soda, 
tea,  lemonade,  port,  sherry,  dry  champagne,  brandy,  apollina- 
ris,  appeared  on  all  the  tables,  attesting  that  voluntary  habit 
of  diet  so  characteristic  of  Anglo-Saxon  countries.  There  is 
no  type  of  food  with  them,  as  there  is  with  us.  Each  stomach 
obeys  its  own  caprice.  And  in  the  semi-hallucination  caused 
by  the  rocking  of  the  sea,  I  always  seemed  to  see  hovering 
over  this  assembly  the  smile  of  a  certain  singular  personage, 
a  New  York  dentist  who  lives  in  Rome,  but  whom  I  met  again 
on  this  ship,  on  his  way  to  a  congress  in  Chicago, —  one  of 
those  indefatigable  artists  in  gold  who,  with  all  the  daring 
and  dexterity  of  an  engineer,  dig  tunnels  in  the  teeth  of  their 
clients,  and  build  metal  bridges  in  the  most  devastated 
mouths.  At  times  he  seemed  to  my  eyes  to  be  clothed  in 
the  dignity  of  host  at  this  travelling  table,  so  plainly,  from 
the  very  first  breakfast,  did  the  boon  companions  show  that 
animal  avidity  which  characterizes  a  predatory  race,  to  whom 
the  preservation  of  a  great  masticating  implement  has  of 
necessity  become  as  important  as  talons  to  the  vulture  or 
claws  to  the  lion. 

I  see  that  dining-room  again,  quiet,  decorous,  solemnly 
resonant  with  the  voice  of  a  minister  reading  prayers.  It  is 
Sunday  morning,  and  of  two  hundred  passengers  more  than 
one  hundred  are  present  at  this  service !  These  very  faces 
which  I  saw  yesterday,  and  shall  see  to-morrow,  flushed  with 
much  eating,  are  bent  over  Bibles,  with  the  seriousness  of 
sincere  personal  conviction.  All  these  people  travel  with 
their  own  prayer  books.  I  watched  them  through  the  sky 
light,  with  the  feeling  that,  in  spite  of  the  prodigious  afflux 
of  immigration,  the  soul  of  those  Pilgrim  Fathers  who  set  sail 
in  the  Mayflower  in  1620  is  not  yet  dead,  and  I  pictured  to 


12  OUTRE-MER 

myself  that  setting  forth,  preceded  by  a  day  of  solemn  humili 
ation,  "the  pastor  having  taken  for  his  text  this  verse  from 
Ezra :  '  Beside  the  river  Ahava  I  proclaimed  a  day  that  we  might 
humble  ourselves  before  our  God  and  receive  of  him  direction 
in  the  right  way,  we,  our  children,  and  all  our  substance.'  " 

This  is  the  profound  feeling  that  still  stirs  in  the  "  revivals  " 
of  America,  with  their  emotion  so  intense  that,  even  in  this 
nineteenth  century,  new  sects  are  forever  springing  up.  You 
could  feel  the  throbbing  of  it  between  the  gilded  walls  of  this 
gaudy  saloon,  with  which  in  my  mind  it  will  ever  be  associ 
ated.  I  shall  always  see  there  yet  another  and  very  different 
scene  —  a  concert  arranged  by  a  theatre  manager  who  is 
making  a  starring  tour  as  far  as  San  Francisco.  The  pro 
ceeds  of  the  concert  were  to  be  given  to  the  hospital  for 
poor  sailors.  A  former  minister  of  the  United  States  to  one 
of  the  first  courts  of  Europe  had  accepted  the  presidency  of 
the  affair.  All  the  humor  of  a  nation  of  debaters,  of  men 
accustomed  to  be  always  talking,  in  private  and  public,  spoke 
in  the  tone  with  which  he  began,  alluding  to  his  unhappy 
cabin  experiences:  " I present  to  yo^t  a  very  poor  sailor."  If 
I  had  not  known  to  what  part  of  the  world  I  was  going,  I 
should  have  learned  from  the  absolutely  simple  manner  of  the 
umquhile  diplomatist.  It  was  enough  to  make  amends  for 
a  sentimental  ditty  that  will  long  ring  in  my  ears,  which 
began,  "Two  lambs  in  the  field,  not  dreaming  of  mint  sauce," 
and  the  painful  vulgarity  of  a  singer  who  mimicked  an  Irish 
chambermaid  about  to  become  an  actress.  Shaking  her  fist 
with  the  vigor  of  a  professional  boxer  making  ready  to  give  a 
"punishment,"  she  howled,  "I  want  to  be  a  Hactress!  a 
Hactress !  "  in  such  formidable  tones  that  the  glasses  trembled 
at  them  as  they  had  not  done  at  the  raging  of  the  sea. 

What  a  course  of  international  psychology  was  that  lower 
smoking-room,  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening,  especially 


AT  SEA  13 

yesterday,  when  they  drew  the  numbers  of  one  of  the  last 
pools,  on  the  speed  of  the  ship.  Fifty  people,  perhaps,  in 
an  atmosphere  redolent  at  once  of  the  steamer,  of  tobacco, 
of  toilet  water  —  for  the  barber's  shop  is  next  door,  and  he 
was  occupied,  with  the  door  open,  in  shampooing  a  client's 
hair  —  and  of  alcohol !  There  is  a  bar  at  the  end  of  the 
room,  where  the  alchemist  to  whom  is  intrusted  the  cocktails 
manipulates  one  of  those  corrosive  mixtures  with  which  Amer 
icans  delight  to  burn  themselves  up.  Poker-playing  goes  on 
all  night  long  in  this  room,  with  its  lining  of  yellow  wood  and 
its  electric  lights,  shaded  by  globes  of  blue  and  rose  color, 
that  shed  a  fairy-like  radiance.  The  players  are  reading  the 
points  on  the  corners  of  their  huge  playing-cards;  their  im 
passive  faces,  schooled  for -a  bluff,  betraying  only  that  cold 
fever  of  the  gambler,  which  n^y  rages  around  the  numbers  of 
the  pool.  A  cadaverous,  thick-Tipped  actor  has  put  them  all 
in  a  bag,  and  is  drawing  them  out  and  allotting  them  to  the 
different  passengers  who  in  the  course  of  the  day  have  in 
scribed  their  names  on  the  sheet  of  paper  hung  up  against  the 
smoke-dimmed  mirror.  Next,  they  will  be  put  up  at  auction, 
and  the  fat  man  will  run  up  the  bidding,  descanting  on  the 
merits  of  number  with  the  glibness  of  a  commercial  traveller, 
though  with  sinister  prediction.  Thus  he  will  say,  "481, 
.  .  .  there  will  be  a  terrible  fog;  480,  that  is  the  lowest,  and 
the  best.  We  shall  slip  along  like  the  Victory.  480,  who 
wants  enough  to  pay  his  insurance?  504,  that  is  the  highest 
and  the  best.  This  is  all  halcyon  weather.  We  shall  make 
506."  And  the  bids  go  up,  one  dollar,  five,  ten,  twenty,  a 
hundred,  until  —  "One,  two,  three,  gone!"  to  the  Honorable 

Mr. . 

The  faces  of  these  stick  most  in  my  memory,  with  their 
hard,  restless  eyes,  and  the  firm,  half-cruel  movement  of  their 
mouths.  Almost  all  of  them  are  gray  rather  than  brown- 
haired,  their  complexion  poisoned  by  the  abuse  of  the  for- 


14  OUTRE-MER 

midable  alcoholic  drinks.  Their  faces  inevitably  bring  up 
before  me  those  western  legends  where  a  cocked  revolver  is 
always  within  reach  of  the  player.  Two  faces,  especially, 
appear  clearly  before  me :  one,  square  cut  and  open,  with  a 
sailor-cap  drawn  down  over  the  brows,  a  short,  straight  pipe 
in  the  corner  of  the  mouth,  and  a  mocking  smile  as  he  raised 
the  bid;  the  other,  sharp  and  insolent,  with  an  expression  at 
once  sly  and  vulgar.  The  voices  which  issued  from  these  two 
mouths,  as  each  grew  more  intense  in  this  strife  for  dollars, 
betrayed  a  hatred  almost  like  that  of  two  different  species,  as 
if  there  were,  in  the  background  of  this  play,  or  more  prop 
erly  this  deed,  the  display  of  a  force  almost  animal.  And  no 
sooner  was  the  strife  over  the  number  of  miles  brought  to  an 
end,  than  it  began  again  over  the  number  of  the  first  pilot 
we  should  meet. 

That  first  pilot  boat,  how  tiny  it  was  as  it  came  flying  be 
fore  the  wind  to  meet  us,  with  all  sails  spread,  the  waves  at 
times  threatening  to  engulf  it !  We  were  six  hundred  miles 
from  port,  and  it  was  a  matter  of  three  hundred  dollars  for 
the  pilot.  That  evening  we  met  another,  who  had  made  his 
five  hundred  miles  for  nothing,  in  the  fearful  wind  of  these 
last  few  days.  For  one  second  the  steam  is  shut  off.  A  tiny 
bark  puts  out  from  the  schooner,  bearing  a  rower  with  the  pilot. 
The  latter  catches  the  rope  ladder  thrown  to  him  from  the 
deck.  He  has  not  overleaped  the  bulwarks  before  the  machin 
ery  is  at  work  again,  and  the  steamer  once  more  at  full  speed. 
Five  minutes  more,  and  the  brave  little  sail-boat  is  only  a 
white  speck  in  the  vast  expanse,  continually  engulfed  in  the 
enormous  hollows  of  the  waves  through  which  we  cut,  with 
the  uniform  speed  of  men  who  are  determined  to  "  break  the 
record."  That  is  the  untranslatable  expression  by  which 
\Americans  so  well  express  that  which,  from  the  very  first,  has 
been  the  foundation  of  their  character;  to  hold  it  possible  to 


AT  SEA  15 

do  anything  which  has  once  been  done,  and  to  exceed  it.  Is 
this  pride  ?  Is  it  the  madness  of  battle  ?  Is  it  yet  another 
instance  of  atavism  —  since  these  men  are  sons  or  grandsons, 
within  three  or  four  generations,  of  desperate  men,  who 
crossed  this  same  ocean  with  the  fixed  idea  that  this  was  their 
last  resort.  I  do  not  know;  but  I  do  know  that  I  shall  not 
soon  forget  the  frantic  speed  of  the  ocean  greyhound,  during 
that  last  day  of  heavy  fog,  nor  that  first  approach  to  the  land 
of  all  audacity  in  the  audacity  of  a  speed  great  enough  to  cut 
through  an  ironclad,  if  we  had  happened  to  meet  one.  But 
who  except  myself  thinks  of  such  a  thing?  Every  one  is 
already  absorbed  in  the  newspapers  which  the  pilot  has  just 
brought.  "It  is  hardly  worth  while,  though,"  says  some  one; 
"they  are  two  days  old." 

The  seventh  day  we  arrive  in  sight  of  New  York,  on  a  sum 
mer  morning  at  once  burning  and  overcast.  We  could  not 
come  up  to  the  wharf  yesterday,  because  of  the  lateness  of  the 
hour,  and  I  am  glad  of  it,  in  view  of  the  incomparable  beauty 
of  the  approach.  The  steamer  is  passing  up  the  mouth  of  the 
Hudson,  which  forms  the  harbor  of  this  great  city,  with  a 
motion  as  measured  as  twenty-four  hours  ago  it  was  rapid. 
This  sensation,  so  unexpected  and  profound,  would  alone 
repay  the  whole  voyage.  The  enormous  estuary  frets  and 
plashes,  upheaved  by  the  last  surges  of  the  Atlantic  ;  and  on 
either  shore  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach, —  on  the  right,  where 
New  York  stretches  away,  on  the  left,  where  Jersey  City 
huddles, —  is  a  long  succession,  indefinite,  indeterminate,  of 
short  wooden  wharves,  broad  and  covered  over.  There  are 
names  inscribed  upon  them,  here  a  railway  company,  there  a 
steamship  line,  then  another  railway,  and  then  another  steamer 
company;  and  so  on  indefinitely,  while  from  one  wharf  after 
another  gigantic  steamboats  come  and  go,  carrying  away  or 
pouring  forth  passengers  by  the  hundred,  scores  of  carriages, 
vast  trains  of  loaded  trucks.  I  count  five,  -six,  of  these  ferry- 


16  OUTRE-MER 

boats, —  fifteen,  twenty.  Enormous,  their  two  tiers  of  white 
and  brown  cabins  overhang  the  green  water,  their  iron 
wheels  churn  the  heavy  waves,  and  over  all  a  gigantic 
walking-beam  beats  off  their  rhythmic  motion.  They  meet, 
touch  lightly,  and  pass  one  another  by  without  a  shock,  so 
sure  is  their  motion.  They  seem  like  colossal  beasts  of  labor, 
each  performing  its  task  with  sure  fidelity.  Numberless  little 
vessels,  stout  and  nimble,  dart  across  their  course.  They  are 
the  tugs.  The  swells  break  rudely  on  their  small  hulls,  and 
you  hear  the  harsh  puffing  of  their  engines,  those  robust  and 
almost  over-large  lungs  of  steel,  which  quite  fill  their  little 
bodies.  You  realize  how  strong  they  are  by  their  forward 
motion,  so  accurately  directed  that  without  ever  slowing  down 
they  dart  between  heavy  vessels,  the  impact  of  which  would 
be  shipwreck.  Trailing  in  their  wake  are  the  most  fragile 
kind  of  barks,  carrying  two,  three,  four  masts.  The  slight 
little  craft,  trembling,  almost  disappears  in  the  sea-green 
track  cut  deep  in  the  laboring  water,  lashed  into  combing 
waves.  Now  and  again  one  of  these  tugs  sends  forth  a  pierc 
ing  and  piteous  whistle,  which  mingles  with  the  hoarse  bellow 
of  the  ferry-boats.  They  are  all  threading  their  way  on  the 
breast  of  this  vast  river,  among  half  a  hundred  great,  slow- 
moving  steamers  like  our  own, —  vessels  from  Europe,  from 
South  America,  from  North  America.  With  tranquil  strength 
the  high  red  hulls  cut  the  heaving  mass,  freighted  with  so 
much  of  human  toil,  so  many  human  lives.  Their  forms  are 
blurred  in  the  warm  haze,  their  outlines  melt  away,  phantom- 
like.  Behind  them  other  steamers  come  into  sight,  barely 
outlined,  dimly  seen;  and  still  farther  in  the  background 
looms  up  a  mighty  forest  of  masts  and  yards,  while  high  over 
all  this  gigantic  moving  mechanism,  which  might  well  be 
the  mart  of  the  entire  world,  towers  the  statue  of  Liberty,  tall 
as  a  lighthouse,  outlined  against  the  foaming  clouds.  On  the 
right  and  on  the  left  the  two  cities  stretch  away,  like  the 


AT  SEA  17 

perspective  of  a  dream,  far  as  the  eye  can  reach  —  beyond 
the  reach  of  thought. 

Leaning  over  the  ship's  rail  on  the  side  toward  New  York, 
I  succeed  in  distinguishing  a  mass  of  diminutive  houses,  an 
ocean  of  low  buildings,  from  the  midst  of  which  uprise,  like 
cliff-bound  islets,  brick  buildings,  so  daringly  colossal  that, 
even  at  this  distance,  their  height  overpowers  my  vision.  I 
count  the  stories  above  the  level  of  the  roofs;  one  has  ten, 
another  twelve.  Another,  not  yet  finished,  has  a  vast  iron 
framework,  outlining  upon  the  sky  the  plan  of  six  more  stories 
above  the  eight  already  built.  Gigantic,  colossal,  enormous, 
daring,  there  are  no  words, — words  are  inadequate  to  this 
apparition,  this  landscape,  in  which  the  vast  outlet  of  the 
river  serves  as  a  frame  for  the  display  of  still  vaster  human 
energy.  Reaching  such  a  pitch  of  collective  effort,  this 
energy  has  become  an  element  of  nature  itself.  To  deepen 
this  impression,  history  adds  the  ferocious  truth  of  figures. 
In  1624,  not  much  more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago, 
the  Indians  were  selling  to  a  Westphalian  the  extreme  tip  of 
Manhattan  Island.  He  founded  this  city  which  lies  here 
before  me.  It  is  the  poetry  of  Democracy,  and  these  sprout- 
ings  forth  of  popular  vitality  are  a  poem,  where  the  individ 
ual  is  lost  sight  of,  and  personal  effort  is  only  a  note  in  an 
immense  concert.  Verily,  this  is  not  the  Parthenon, —  that 
little  temple  on  a  little  hill,  in  which  the  Hellenes  summed 
up  their  Ideal,  with  hardly  anything  of  the  material,  and  of 
the  Spirit  enough  to  animate  it  with  measure  and  harmony 
down  to  its  smallest  atoms.  But  it  is  the  obscure  and  tre 
mendous  poetry  of  the  modern  world,  and  it  gives  you  a  tragic 
shudder,  there  is  in  it  so  much  of  mad  and  wilful  humanity 
in  a  horizon  like  that  of  this  morning  —  and  it  is  the  same 
every  day ! 


II 

THE   FIRST  WEEK 

I  HAVE  passed  a  week  in  New  York  and  have  hardly  seen 
one  of  the  persons  to  whom  I  have  brought  introductions. 
During  the  burning  heats  of  an  August  as  stifling  as  that  of 
Madrid,  they  are  all  in  the  country,  at  the  seashore,  in  Europe. 
I  myself  am  about  to  set  out  for  Newport,  the  Deauville  of 
America,  that  I  may  see  society  at  close  range.  I  have  there 
fore  had  leisure  during  these  seven  days,  to  ramble  about  the 
city  as  a  mere  tourist,  and  to  receive  a  first  impression  of 
it  —  a  first  shock,  as  the  agreeable  Professor  Charles  N. 
of  Cambridge  said  to  me,  advising  me  to  name  this  book 
of  travels  American  Shocks,  by  way  of  contrast  to  my  Italian 
Sensations. 

I  wish  I  might  put  down  here  the  journal  of  this  week ;  not 
that  I  overestimate  the  importance  and  interest  of  these  quite 
superficial  hotel  and  street  experiences.  They  warrant  no 
general  conclusion,  and  yet  they  have  their  value.  It  is,  so  to 
speak,  a  rushing  sense  of  the  foreign,  which  a  longer  sojourn 
will  tone  down,  will  do  away  with,  to  make  room  for  a  more 
quiet,  perhaps  more  exact,  observation.  These  almost  instinc 
tive  perceptions  of  the  difference  of  atmosphere  between  the 
country  we  are  in  and  that  from  which  we  come,  no  longer 
deceive  us  when  they  have  once  been  interpreted.  I  already 
foresee  that  certain  very  general  theories  are  nearing  the  limit 
of  their  existence.  It  is  probable  that  these  hypotheses  are  very 
inadequate,  and  that  I  shall  change  them  more  than  once  before 
leaving  this  continent.  Let  me  at  least  fix  the  surprises  of 

18 


THE   FIRST  WEEK  19 

these  first  hours  before  they  are  quite  effaced  —  if  it  were  only 
by  way  of  memorandum. 

Saturday.  —  Henry  J.  said  to  me  when  we  parted  in  London, 
"  I  am  looking  forward  to  your  impression  of  the  wooden  docks 
of  New  York.  You  will  want  to  return  by  the  next  steamer,  as 
C did!" 

The  latter  is  a  young  Frenchman  of  rare  mental  superiority, 
who  like  myself  determined  to  visit  the  New  World  for  a  course 
of  treatment  of  activity  and  democracy.  He  landed  upon  a 
wooden  wharf,  as  I  did,  found  his  way  to  some  hotel,  as  I  have 
done,  presented  his  letters  of  introduction,  as  I  shall  present 
mine.  Five  days  later  he  boarded  a  vessel  about  to  sail  for 
Europe.  "  I  could  not  endure  the  blow/'  was  his  only  reply  to 
the  surprise  of  his  relatives. 

In  truth,  the  blow  of  the  landing  is  severe,  at  least  to  a 
Frenchman  accustomed  to  that  administrative  order  whose 
delays  he  curses  when  he  is  subjected  to  them,  whose  conven 
iences  he  sighs  for  in  this  crush  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  crowd, 
where  the  struggle  for  life  has  its  humble  and  vexatious  symbol 
in  the  struggle  for  baggage. 

No  sooner  is  the  steamer  docked  than  you  find  yourself  in 
an  immense  shed  crowded  with  people  who  come  and  go, 
jostling  and  being  jostled.  Gigantic  policemen,  rotund  under 
their  tight  girdles,  stand  firm  in  the  sea  of  people,  like  columns 
against  which  they  must  break.  Custom-house  officers  in 
uniforms  unbuttoned  because  of  the  heat,  their  cheeks  dis 
tended  with  tobacco,  deface  with  long  jets  of  brown  saliva  the 
place  destined  for  the  trunks ;  and  the  trunks  are  no  sooner 
brought  up  from  the  hold  and  set  down  there,  than  around 
them  swarm  expressmen  offering  checks,  and  carpenters  armed 
with  hammer  and  chisel  to  open  and  nail  down  the  boxes. 
Custom-house  officers  plunge  their  arms  into  the  open  trunks, 
turning  and  overturning  linen  and  dresses  with  all  the  rough 


20  OUTRE-MER 

heedlessness  of  men  in  a  hurry.  The  trunks  at  last  closed  and 
checked  are  seized  by  porters,  and  sent  spinning  down  to  a 
lower  story  by  a  long  wooden  incline,  at  the  risk  of  crushing 
them,  while  a  pungent,  sickening  odor  of  perspiring  flesh 
mingles  with  the  confused  din.  Such  is  the  entrance  to  the 
great  American  city  —  as  swift  and  brutal  as  a  round  in  the 
ring.  All  the  time  there  are  sharp-eyed  little  men  running 
about  in  the  chaos  of  people  and  trunks.  They  are  reporters 
on  the  lookout  for  an  interview.  I  see  the  ship's  dentist 
struggling  with  one  of  them,  who  is  asking  him  about  the 
cholera  in  Italy.  The  dilapidated  hack  in  which  I  finally  seat 
myself  seems  like  a  wheeled  Paradise,  as  it  bears  me  away 
from  the  tumultuous  crowd,  though  it  is  jolting  over  a  wretched 
wooden  pavement,  and  the  quarter  that  lies  between  the  wharf  and 
Fifth  Avenue,  where  my  hotel  is  to  be  found,  is  abominably  ugly. 
Rows  of  red  houses  stretch  out  before  me  to  an  indefinite 
extent,  all  precisely  alike,  with  sash  windows  and  no  blinds. 
Other  houses  appear  hideous  with  signs,  their  ground  floors 
occupied  either  with  liquor  saloons  or  with  stalls  set  out  with 
miserable  wares,  cheap  fruits,  and  withered  vegetables.  The 
foul  pavement  is  covered  with  a  sticky  mud,  compounded  of 
rubbish  rather  than  of  earth.  Not  a  tree  before  these  houses, 
not  a  grass  plot ;  but  rails  laid  along  the  streets  for  tramways, 
poles  for  telegraph  wires,  and  presently  what  seems  to  be  a 
long  double  tunnel  supported  by  iron  pillars.  It  is  the  aerial 
railway,  the  "  elevated  "  as  they  say.  There  are  four  of  them 
which  stretch  the  whole  length  of  the  city,  and  carry  two  hun 
dred  million  passengers  every  year.  During  the  short  time 
that  our  way  follows  this  tunnel  I  count  the  trains  that  pass 
overhead,  three  going  down  town  and  three  up.  The  strong 
framework  which  supports  them  trembles  under  their  weight 
and  the  fleetness  of  their  passage.  What  can  be  the  life  of 
those  inhabitants  of  this  city  whose  windows  open  upon  this 
incessant  mad  flight  of  locomotives  and  cars? 


THE  FIRST   WEEK  21 

The  hack  passes  through  two  quieter  streets  and  reaches  an 
avenue,  where  a  succession  of  cable  cars  rushes  by  in  the  same 
mad  haste.  An  endless  chain  runs  underground,  carrying 
along  the  heavy  cars  upon  rails,  over  which  our  carriage  jolts. 
Their  automatic  movement  would  terrify  you  like  a  nightmare 
but  for  the  man  standing  in  the  front.  His  clenched  fingers 
work  the  handles  of  the  lever  that  by  turn  grips  and  releases 
the  chain,  which  moves  invisible  below  the  long  fissure  that  lies 
like  a  third  rail  between  the  other  two.  There  are  so  many  of 
these  cable  cars,  they  go  so  fast,  they  so  compactly  block  the 
avenue,  that  vehicles  drawn  by  horses  hardly  find  room  to  pass 
along.  The  latter  are,  therefore,  becoming  so  rare  that  the 
aspect  of  the  streets  is  not  like  any  part  of  any  European  city. 
There  are  no  fiacres  such  as  are  the  gayety  of  Parisian  streets, 
no  hansoms  such  as  make  the  animation  of  those  of  London, 
none  of  the  botte  which  roll  through  Rome  to  the  nimble  trot 
of  their  horses.  You  at  once  perceive  that  that  darling  of  the 
middle  class,  the  private  hired  carriage,  has  no  reason  for  being. 
The  laborer  and  the  business  man  have  the  elevated  road  or 
the  street  car  that  goes  faster  than  the  best  horse.  Those  who 
are  neither  laborers  nor  business  men  are  rich  men  and  have 
their  own  carriages. 

One  open  place  with  trees  and  turf,  dominated  by  a  tower 
like  the  Giralda  of  Seville,  is  Madison  Square,  the  point  where 
commercial  Broadway  crosses  fashionable  Fifth  Avenue  stretch 
ing  endlessly  away  without  cable  road  or  elevated  railway.  The 
tower  is  surmounted  with  a  statue,  in  whose  outlines  I  recognize 
the  Diana  of  the  great  sculptor,  St.  Gaudens,  photographs  of 
which  I  have  seen.  The  slender  figure  of  the  goddess  stands  out 
finely  against  the  blue  sky.  /It  is  the  first  evidence  of  beauty 
that  I  have  seen  since  I  set  foot  outside  of  the  ship/  Below  the 
Diana,  all  up  and  down  the  tower,  is  stretched  in  huge  iron  let 
ters  the  announcement  of  a  bicycle  exhibition.  Between  the 
noble  creation  of  the  artist  and  the  contiguous  advertisement 


22  OUTRE-MER 

the  contact  is  as  close  and  the  contrast  almost  as  great  as 
between  the  New  York  of  labor,  which  I  have  just  passed 
through,  and  the  New  York  of  wealth,  which  at  this  moment  I 
am  entering.  Is  there  a  cause  for  this  total  absence  of  transi 
tion  ?  Does  it  betray  a  complete  absence  of  that  sense  of  har 
mony  which  we  call  —  which  we  used  to  call  —  taste?  Is  it 
simply  that  the  city,  having  grown  too  rapidly  upon  a  territory 
too  narrow,  finds  space  lacking  for  its  growth,  as  it  is  also  lack 
ing,  it  would  appear,  for  the  posting  of  bills  ?  I  leave  the  solv 
ing  of  these  problems  to  a  time  when  I  have  not  to  install 
myself  in  a  new  hotel,  and  when  I  am  not  weaned  with  seven 
days  at  sea.  A  negro  in  livery,  with  smiling  face  and  white 
teeth,  in  which  sparkle  bits  of  gold  half  as  large  as  my  finger 
nail,  has  just  opened  the  door  of  my  carriage.  I  have  barely 
time  to  speak  to  the  clerk  when  another  negro  opens  the  door 
of  an  elevator,  which  mounts  with  dizzy  rapidity  to  the  seventh 
floor ;  and  now  behold  a  third  negro  entering  the  parlor  in 
which  I  am  hastily  scratching  down  these  notes,  to  bring  me  a 
jug  of  filtered  water,  overtopped  by  a  lump  of  ice  almost  as 
big  as  his  head.  I  gaze  upon  him  in  amazement ;  but  he, 
much  offended  with  my  absence  of  mind,  while  waiting  for 
my  orders  draws  a  key  from  his  pocket,  takes  a  second  from  a 
secretary,  and  a  third  from  the  door,  and  begins  to  jingle  them 
to  attract  my  attention. 

"What  are  you  doing?  "  I  ask  him. 

"  I  thought  you  might  want  to  send  a  telegram,"  he  replies, 

'  with  a  familiar  mendacity  that  would  disarm  a  slave-dealer.     I 

send  him  for  a  newspaper,  which  he  brings  me.     It  is  marked 

three  cents,  but  he  asks  me  ten,  adding  philosophically,  by  way 

of  excuse,  — 

"  You  know,  on  the  other  side  everything  is  cheaper." 

Sunday.  —  Mass  this  morning  in  a  little  church  at  the  corner 
of  Thirtieth  Street.     One  of  the  facts  best  known  and  most 


THE  FIRST  WEEK  23 

remarked  upon  in  France  is  the  vitality  of  Catholicism  in  the 
United  States.  The  names  of  the  three  great  authors  of  this 
renascence — Cardinal  Gibbons,  Archbishop  Ireland,  and  Mon- 
signor  Keane  —  are  as  familiar  to  us  as  to  Americans  them 
selves.  What  is  the  secret  of  this  vitality  ?  I  shall  try  some 
day  to  find  out.  At  present  I  can  only  grasp  the  too  apparent 
contrast  between  our  own  churches  and  this  one. 

On  the  outside,  its  walls  of  gray  stone,  with  their  fluttering 
Japanese  ivy,  are  not  very  different  from  the  other  buildings  in 
the  block.  To  enter,  you  cross  an  anteroom,  where  you  must 
pay  fifteen  cents,  —  a  little  more  than  seventy-five  centimes. 
For  that  matter,  what  would  the  poor  do  in  the  vast  hall  of  pol 
ished  wood,  which  serves  as  chapel  ?  Each  seat  is  covered  with 
leather  cushions,  the  entrance  to  them  barred  by  red  silk  cords, 
hanging  between  hooks  of  copper.  The  entire  floor  is  carpeted ; 
the  pictures  on  the  walls  are  covered  because  it  is  summer.  It 
gives  one  the  impression  of  a  prayer  club.  Everything  is  brand- 
new,  opulent,  comfortable,  and  yet  religious,  for  the  worship 
pers  follow  the  service  without  a  whisper  or  a  wandering  glance. 
Recognizing  copies  of  certain  pictures,  behind  their  green 
gauze  coverings,  —  a  Madonna  of  the  impassioned  Andrea, 
a  Virgin  of  the  lucid  Raphael,  Allori's  tragic  Judith, — 
the  churches  of  Italy  rise  up  before  me  in  sudden  contrast,  — 
ruinous,  unclean,  sullied  by  superstition ;  and  yet  so  beautiful, 
because  they  have  endured,  because  everything  in  them  moves 
the  heart  with  the  profound  emotion  of  the  past  —  a  long,  long 
past ! 

But  the  worshippers  who  are  gathered  in  this  church  have 
precisely  such  a  building  as  suits  them.  They  are  men  of  the 
present,  and  for  them  religion  is  neither  a  reverie  nor  a  long 
ing.  The  sermon,  which  the  priest  bases  upon  the  gospel  for 
the  day,  —  the  incident  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  —  still  farther 
reveals  the  close  presence  of  things  actual.  Pie  speaks  of  the 
descent  from  Jerusalem  to  Jericho  in  precisely  the  terms  with 


24  OUTRE-MER 

which  he  would  speak  of  going  from  up- town  to  the  Battery, 
He  refers  to  St.  Paul,  and  his  conversion  as  the  apostle  was 
riding  near  Damascus  corner.  In  his  illustrations,  the  word 
dollar  continually  recurs :  "  If  you  had  made  a  thousand 
dollars  "  ..."  If  you  had  paid  a  hundred  dollars  for  such  a 
thing ;  "  and  his  severe,  large -featured  face  grows  sarcastic,  his 
voice  vehement,  as  he  pours  invectives  upon  the  clergy  of 
Europe,  "  with  their  prelates  who  live  like  princes."  When 
he  raises  his  arm,  I  see  that  the  red  vestment  which  he  has 
put  on  for  preaching  shines  with  a  brilliant  newness  which 
harmonizes  well  with  this  church,  these  seats,  this  carpet,  these 
people,  this  sermon.  But  I  ask  again,  at  what  hour  and  where 
do  the  poor  folk  pray? 

By  carriage  up  Fifth  Avenue  and  through  Central  Park, 
which  is  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  of  New  York.  Two  hours  of 
the  afternoon ;  and  I  paid  four  dollars  —  say  twenty  francs  — 
for  a  drive  that  would  be  worth  a  hundred  sous  with  us,  or  five 
shillings  in  London.  One  of  my  steamer  companions,  who 
recommended  this  drive  to  me,  gave  me  several  reasons  for 
its  costliness.  The  first  and  most  evident,  I  have  already  men 
tioned.  A  carriage  is  a  luxury,  and  all  luxuries  are  expensive 
here,  while  the  necessaries  are  cheaper  than  elsewhere.  This 
is  why  America  still  tempts  our  laboring  people,  and  why  so 
many  of  its  own  rich  men  go  to  Europe  that  they  may  have 
these  luxuries,  and  better  ones,  at  a  fifth  or  a  sixth  the  price. 
The  second  reason  is  that  the  hackmen,  like  all  other  laborers, 
are  bound  together  in  an  impregnable  Union. 

Besides,  it  is  but  too  evident  that  money  cannot  have  much 
value  here.  There  is  too  much  of  it.  The  interminable  suc 
cession  of  luxurious  mansions  which  line  Fifth  Avenue  proclaim 
its  mad  abundance.  No  shops,  —  unless  of  articles  of  luxury, 
—  a  few  dressmakers,  a  few  picture-dealers  —  the  last  froth  of 
the  spent  wave  of  that  tide  of  business  which  drowns  the  rest 
of  the  city  —  only  independent  dwellings,  each  one  of  which, 


THE   FIRST   WEEK  25 

including  the  ground  on  which  it  stands,  implies  a  revenue 
which  one  dares  not  calculate.  Here  and  there  are  vast 
constructions  which  reproduce  the  palaces  and  chateaux  of 
Europe.  I  recognize  one  French  country  seat  of  the  sixteenth 
century ;  another,  a  red  and  white  house,  is  in  the  style  of  the 
time  of  Louis  XIII.  The  absence  of  unity  in  this  architecture 
is  a  sufficient  reminder  that  this  is  the  country  of  the  individual 
will,  as  the  absence  of  gardens  and  trees  around  these  sumptu 
ous  residences  proves  the  newness  of  all  this  wealth  and  of  the 
city.  This  avenue  has  visibly  been  willed  and  created  by  sheer 
force  of  millions,  in  a  fever  of  land  speculation,  which  has  not 
left  an  inch  of  ground  unoccupied.  This  rapidity  is  again 
shown  in  the  almost  total  absence  of  life-like  figures  in  the 
sculptures  with  which  the  windows  and  colonnades  of  these 
impromptu  palaces  are  decorated.  An  artist  needs  time  to 
observe  and  patiently  follow  the  forms  of  life  ;  and  if  the  whole 
United  States  had  not  found  means  to  get  along  without  him, 
where  would  they  have  been  ?  They  have  made  up  for  it  by 
feats  of  energy.  That  is  something  to  triumph  over  in  the 
industrial  world.  The  world  of  art  requires  less  self-conscious 
ness,  —  an  impulse  of  life  which  forgets  itself,  the  alternations 
of  dreamy  idleness  with  fervid  execution.  Years  must  pass 
before  these  conditions  are  possible  on  the  banks  of  the 
Hudson. 

Is  the  Park  also  a  hasty  and  arbitrary  production  ?  How 
ever  that  may  be,  the  virginal  vigor  of  the  soil  there  bursts  forth 
in  foliage  of  surprising  opulence.  It  seems  to  me  —  but  is  this 
a  just  view? —  that  there  is  a  degree  of  disproportion  between 
this  prodigal  leafage  and  the  branches  themselves,  as  if  these 
fine  trees  had  slighter  trunks  and  a  more  nervous  ramification 
than  ours.  Have  they  grown  too  fast,  like  the  houses? 

The  extent  of  the  Park  is  enormous,  and  you  stand  amazed 
when,  having  followed  paths  embowered  in  verdure,  others  wind 
ing  around  a  lake,  still  others  bordering  immense  fields  where 


26  OUTRE-MER 

sheep  are  feeding,  you  perceive  above  the  thick  green  of  the 
clumps  of  trees  a  train  flying  over  a  track  of  red  metal,  thirty 
feet  up  in  the  air,  and  the  city  beginning  all  over  again. 

This  Park  is  simply  a  garden  bisecting  one  of  the  avenues  of 
the  city,  —  the  Seventh.  A  whole  people  throng  its  paths  this 
Sunday  afternoon,  a  veritable  nation  of  working  folk  at  rest. 
I  have  not  met  two  private  victorias  on  these  roads,  swarming 
as  they  are  with  vehicles.  They  are  all  pleasure  carriages, 
packed  full  with  women  and  children,  or  tilburys  driven  by 
their  owners.  I  observe  a  sort  of  cart  which  is  new  to  me,  — 
an  oblong  box  with  a  bellows  top,  which  at  need  might  shelter 
two  persons.  It  is  almost  hidden  between  four  enormous 
wheels  of  startling  fragility.  A  horse  which  goes  like  the  wind 
is  attached  to  it  without  a  collar,  entirely  free  in  his  slight  net 
work  of  flexible  straps.  As  these  carriages  fly  past,  you  might 
fancy  a  race  of  huge  demented  spiders,  so  large  and  at  the 
same  time  so  slight  is  their  iron  framework.  The  people  who 
pass  you  by  in  these  vehicles  and  on  the  sidewalks  are  substan 
tially  dressed  and  without  elegance,  —  not  a  single  workman's 
blouse,  and  on  the  other  hand  not  a  rag  nor  anything  which 
would  betray  poverty.  The  men  are  rather  small,  thin,  and 
nervous  in  action.  The  women  are  small,  too,  and  without 
much  beauty.  In  the  dress  of  the  latter  there  is  a  visible 
abuse  of  high  colors  and  of  trimming.  It  is  like  an  immense 
walking  emporium  of  ready-made  clothes.  Nevertheless,  an 
air  of  social  health  and  good  humor  breathes  from  this  crowd. 
The  mounted  policemen  who  occasionally  pass  appear  as  little 
to  be  watching  as  to  be  themselves  in  need  of  watching. 
What  I  feel  most  strongly,  without  being  able  to  give  a  posi 
tive  reason  for  the  feeling,  is  that  I  am  terribly  far  away,  and 
in  a  terribly  different  country. 

Monday.  —  At  what  time  of  day  do  they  die  here  ?  At  what 
time  do  they  love?  At  what  time  do  they  think?  At 


THE  FIRST   WEEK  27 

what  time,  indeed,  are  they  men,  nothing  but  men,  as  old 
Faust  said,  and  not  machines  for  work  or  locomotion?1  This 
is  the  question  I  keep  asking  in  spite  of  myself,  after  a  day 
spent  in  the  cable  cars,  the  elevated,  —  the  L,  to  borrow  the 
New  Yorker's  abbreviation,  —  the  electric  cars,  the  ferry-boats, 
seeing  the  city.  One  succeeds  the  other  so  rapidly,  you  are 
so  quickly  transferred  from  tramway  to  tramway,  from  train 
to  train,  that  the  stranger,  one  who  is  not  up  to  the  times,  feels 
a  stupefaction  something  like  that  of  the  honest  citizen  at  one 
of  Hanlon-Lee's  pantomimes.  This,  be  it  said  in  parenthesis, 
is  probably  the  origin  of  this  device  in  America.  The  acro 
bats  had  only  to  hurry,  to  make  haste,  to  excite  to  frenzy 
that  fever  for  getting  there  which  has  led  the  people  of  this 
country  to  the  singular  invention  of  making  the  street  walk. 

For  that  is  what  this  cable  tramway,  this  railway  on  the  level 
of  the  street,  these  electric  tramways,  really  are  —  it  is  the 
street  which  walks — which  runs  indeed.  You  miss  a  car  — 
another  is  here ;  so  full  you  could  hardly  drop  a  dollar  on  the 
floor.  You  get  in  none  the  less,  glad  of  a  chance  to  stand 
inside  on  the  platform,  on  the  step,  while  ragged  urchins,  fright 
fully  thin,  but  all  nerves  and  energy,  manage  to  jump  aboard  of 
a  car  between  two  street  corners,  into  an  elevated  car  between 
two  stations,  crying  the  daily  paper — no,  not  even  that,  the 
paper  of  the  hour,  of  the  minute.  Edison  began  life  that  way, 
legend  says. 

What  faces  I  have  met  in  the  vagaries  of  this  aimless  jour 
ney  ;  what  thousands  of  faces  which  I  shall  never  see  again  ! 
What  strikes  me  most  in  these  innumerable  countenances  is 
the  absence  of  interest,  j  The  contrast  is  extraordinary  between 
the  good-fellowship  of  the  omnibus  that  is  complet  with  us, 
where  all  the  neighbors  take  notice  of  one  another,  where  the 
merest  nothing  starts  a  conversation.  Here  each  eye  seems 
fixed  upon  the  inner  thought — upon  some  business — whatever 
it  may  be,  which  will  not  wait,  and  which  is  the  reason  why, 


28  OUTRE-MER 

when  they  leave  the  car,  men  and  women  run,  as  they  ran  to 
catch  it,  as  they  run  up  and  down  the  stairs  of  the  elevated 
road. 

Mr. ,  a  brother  journalist  who  has  served  me  to-day  as 

guide,  says  that  they  are  no  more  pressed  for  time  than  any 
Parisian. 

"  They  hurry  so,"  he  said,  "  from  mere  habit,  interest,  nerv 
ousness.  With  it  all  they  have  curious  streaks  of  laziness. 
You  will  see  them  buy  a  paper  in  a  hotel,  at  a  restaurant,  and 
pay  three  cents  more  than  the  marked  price,  because  they  are 
too  indolent  to  go  into  the  street  for  it." 

I  begin  to  understand  how  this  negligence  and  this  activity 
belong  together  as  I  remark  the  rude  finish  of  these  very  cars, 
the  want  of  care  in  the  attire  of  the  people.  But  these  are 
individual  cases ;  and  you  have  only  to  come  in  contact  with 
things  as  a  whole  to  receive  again  that  impression  of  a  Babel 
with  a  splendor  all  its  own,  an  impression  which — shall  I  avow 
it?  —  I  have  felt  most  strongly  in  connection  with  a  building 
devoted  entirely  to  business  offices,  and  a  bridge  over  which 
runs  a  railway  ! 

The  building  is  called  the  Equitable,  from  the  name  of  the 
insurance  company  that  built  it.  It  is  a  gigantic  palace  with  a 
marble  facade,  rising  up  almost  at  the  end  of  Wall  Street,  the 
street  of  the  milliards,  and  very  near  Trinity  Church  ceme 
tery,  where,  hushed  by  the  frantic  tumult  of  life  and  the  grating 
of  the  cable  car,  reposes  the  printer  of  the  first  newspaper  pub 
lished  in  New  York,  —  William  Bradford.  What  a  tomb  for  a 
journalist ! 

Figures  alone  can  give  an  idea  —  not,  indeed,  exact  but  ap 
proximate  —  of  this  human  beehive  with  its  thousand  offices. 
Mr. tells  me  that  ten  thousand  persons  a  day  use  the  ele 
vator  of  which  we  availed  ourselves  for  going  up  to  the  roof. 
The  hum  of  life  in  the  enormous  building,  the  swarms  of  comers 
and  goers,  the  endless  ramifications  of  the  corridors,  reduce 


THE   FIRST   WEEK  29 

your  mind  almost  to  a  stupor  of  admiration,  such  as  you  also 
feel  when  looking  from  above  upon  this  great  city. 

Far  as  the  eye  can  reach  it  stretches  away,  between  the  two 
rivers  which  girdle  the  island,  and  through  innumerable 
columns  of  smoke  one  is  still  able  to  distinguish  the  practical 
simplicity  of  its  construction  —  broad,  longitudinal  avenues  cut 
at  right  angles  by  streets,  thus  distributing  the  blocks  of  houses 
in  equal  masses.  You  are  acquainted  with  the  city  as  soon  as 
you  understand  it.  Given  the  number  of  the  street,  with  the 
usual  East  or  West,  showing  that  it  is  on  the  right  or  left  of 
Fifth  Avenue,  and  you  know  within  ten  yards  how  far  you  have 
to  go,  all  the  blocks  being  of  uniform  size.  This  is  not  even 
a  city  in  the  sense  in  which  we  understand  the  word,  we  who 
have  grown  up  amid  the  charm  of  irregular  cities  which  grew 
as  the  trees  do,  slowly,  with  the  variety,  the  picturesque 
character  of  natural  things.  This  is  a  table  of  contents  of 
unique  character,  arranged  for  convenient  handling.  Seen 
from  here  it  is  so  colossal,  it  encloses  so  formidable  an 
accumulation  of  human  efforts,  as  to  overpass  the  bounds  of 
imagination.  You  think  you  must  be  dreaming  when  you 
see  beyond  the  rivers  two  other  cities  —  Jersey  City  and 
Brooklyn  —  spread  out  along  their  shores.  The  latter  is  only  a 
suburb,  and  it  has  nine  hundred  thousand  inhabitants. 

A  bridge  connects  New  York  with  Brooklyn,  overhanging  an 
arm  of  the  sea.  Seen  even  from  afar,  this  bridge  astounds  you 
like  one  of  those  architectural  nightmares  given  by  Piranesi  in 
his  weird  etchings.  You  see  great  ships  passing  beneath  it, 
and  this  indisputable  evidence  of  its  height  confuses  the  mind. 
But  walk  over  it,  feel  the  quivering  of  the  monstrous  trellis  of 
iron  and  steel  interwoven  for  a  length  of  sixteen  hundred  feet 
at  a  height  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  feet  above  the  water ; 
see  the  trains  that  pass  over  it  in  both  directions,  and  the  steam 
boats  passing  beneath  your  very  body,  while  carriages  come 
and  go,  and  foot  passengers  hasten  along,  an  eager  crowd,  and 


30  OUTRE-MER 

you  will  feel  that  the  engineer  is  the  great  artist  of  our  epoch, 
and  you  will  own  that  these  people  have  a  right  to  plume  them 
selves  on  their  audacity,  on  the  go-ahead  which  has  never 
flinched. 

At  the  same  time  you  ask  yourself  what  right  they  have  to 
call  themselves,  as  a  people,  young.  They  are  recent,  their 
advent  is  so  astonishingly  new  that  one  can  hardly  believe  in 
dates  in  the  face  of  these  prodigies  of  activity.  But  recent  as 
is  this  civilization,  it  is  evidently  mature,  at  least  here.  The 
impression  upon  me  this  evening  is  that  I  have  been  exploring 
a  city  which  is  an  achievement  and  not  a  beginning.  Its  life  is 
not  an  experiment ;  it  is  a  mode  of  existence,  with  its  incon 
veniences  as  well  as  its  splendors.  For  the  go-ahead,  the  tire 
less  forward,  is  not  confined  to  trains  and  machines.  I  have 
been  called  from  this  paper  to  reply  to  fifteen  applications  for 
autographs  and  six  requests  for  interviews.  This  eagerness 
would  make  me  vain  if  I  did  not  know  that  it  is  the  lot  of  every 
foreign  visitor.  Let  but  the  press  announce  your  arrival,  and 
if  your  connections  are  in  the  slightest  degree  public  —  though 
you  are  here  merely  to  avoid  a  scandalous  lawsuit  —  you  must 
pay  your  entrance  fee,  sign  your  name  hundreds  of  times  and 
proclaim  aloud  what  you  think  of  the  country  —  before  you 
have  seen  it !  A  reporter  has  even  come  this  evening  to  ask 
my  opinion  as  to  love  in  America,  after  a  sojourn  of  forty-eight 
hours  ! 

Tuesday  and  Wednesday.  —  Matters  of  business  have  called 
me  again  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  Equitable  and  the 
Battery,  with  the  effect  only  of  renewing  and  heightening  my 
first  impressions.  The  less  prosaic  duty  of  securing  a  suit 
able  shelter  for  a  somewhat  prolonged  winter  sojourn  has  led 
me,  in  the  course  of  these  journeyings,  to  examine  several 
hotels. 

Such  visits   give    only   the   most   superficial    impressions. 


THE  FIRST  WEEK  31 

And  yet,  in  every  country,  hotels  have  this  documentary 
value,  that  they  give  what  the  people  of  the  country  ask  for. 
Every  one  who  establishes  a  lodging-house  or  a  restaurant  is, 
in  his  way,  a  psychologist,  whose  talent  consists  in  securing 
guests.  And  how,  if  not  by  perceiving  and  ministering  to 
their  tastes?  A  simple  inn,  once  it  is  successful,  resembles 
the  imagination  of  those  who  frequent  it,  and  who  enjoy 
themselves  there  because  they  frequent  it. 

In  the  P'rench  provinces,  for  example,  the  hotels  are  in 
differently  furnished,  with  tiny  wash-basins  and  water  jugs, 
battered  furniture,  and  threadbare  carpets;  but  the  food  is 
nearly  always  excellent,  and  the  wine  cellar  stocked  with 
intelligence.  This  is  indeed  the  taste  of  the  middle-class 
citizen  of  our  country,  whom  boarding-school  and  barracks 
have  taught  to  do  without  comforts,  who  are  hostile  to  useless 
expenditure  on  any  large  scale,  economically  making  things 
last  indefinitely.  On  the  other  hand,  his  sensations  are  acute; 
he  is  a  high  liver,  knowing  in  wines.  He  likes  to  talk,  and 
he  willingly  lingers  over  the  table,  in  the  good  fellowship  of 
the  coffee  cup  and  the  liqueur  glass.  So  in  Italy,  the  grand 
dismantled  palace,  which  so  often  does  duty  as  locanda,  with 
its  frescoed  ceilings,  the  great  pictures  on  its  walls,  ill-wgrmed 
from  a  badly  constructed  chimney,  with  servants  in  tattered 
dress-coats,  intelligent  and  familiar,  with  fried  fish,  a  risotto 
m&fiaschi  of  home-made  wine  scattered  over  the  table  —  how 
well  it  suits  the  travellers  of  Tuscany,  of  the  Romagna,  and 
Venice !  Not  one  of  these  features  but  its  counterpart  is  to 
be  found,  in  the  man  accustomed  to  a  poverty-stricken  life  in 
some  setting  of  magnificence,  naturally  kindly  to  his  inferiors 
and  indulgent  as  to  their  personal  appearance,  son  of  a  coun 
try  where  money  is  scarce  and  industrial  activity  still  more 
infrequent,  and  where  parsimony  governs  even  food.  So, 
again,  the  English  hotel,  with  the  abundance  of  its  little 
rooms,  its  distant  and  active  servants,  its  copious  morning 


32  OUTRE-MER 

breakfast,  the  great  pieces  of  roast  meat  for  its  cold  lunch,  and 
its  dinner  served  at  separate  tables,  that  by  themselves  alone 
reveal  the  love  of  home  and  the  reserve  which  are  the  ground 
work  of  nineteen  Englishmen  out  of  twenty.  They  have  a 
word  for  it  for  which  neither  Frenchmen  nor  Italians  have  a 
translation,  so  little  have  they  the  thing;  it  is  privacy,  that 
which  a  gentleman  is  bound  to  respect  in  the  private  life  of 
another  gentleman,  and  the  right  to  make  respected  in  his 
own  life.  Even  in  a  transient  caravanserai  they  find  means 
for  having  this  law  observed. 

These  various  pictures  and  reflections  followed  me  as  I 
crossed  the  threshold  of  certain  New  York  hotels  which  had 
been  pointed  out  to  me  as  most  recently  built.  They  are  all 
edifices  of  the  kind  which,  in  Chicago,  they  call  "  sky  scrapers" 
and  "  cloud  pressers."  One  is  ten  stories  high,  another  twelve, 
another  fourteen.  The  last  and  newest  has  seventeen. 

First  comes  the  marble  hall,  more  or  less  splendid  in  deco 
ration,  upon  which  frequently  opens  a  restaurant  or  bar,  a 
cloak-room,  a  book-store,  and  other  shops.  An  index  points 
you  to  the  fact  that  the  barber  shop  is  in  the  basement. 
Behind  a  grating  are  the  elevators, —  four,  five,  six, —  ready 
to  mount  up  with  the  rapidity  of  an  electric  despatch.  Yes 
terday  I  felt  as  if  the  Americans  made  the  streets  walk;  to-day 
I  feel  as  if  they  made  the  floors  of  their  houses  fly. 

These  hotels,  foolishly  sumptuous,  have  carpets  only  on  the 
passageways.  The  stairways  show  their  naked  marble,  on 
which  no  one  ever  sets  foot,  unless,  haply,  the  servants, 
who  also  have  their  own  elevators.  And  all  along  the  walls 
of  the  passages,  as  on  those  of  the  smallest  chambers,  are  fan 
tastic  appliances  for  keeping  up  this  chase  of  the  stories,  and 
giving  you,  if  you  live  on  the  fifteenth  floor,  the  sensation  of 
being  on  the  first.  Upon  a  box  in  each  corridor  are  written 
these  words:  "United  States  Mail  Chute."  I  ask  their  mean 
ing,  and  my  guide  shows  me  a  long  glass  channel,  down  which 


THE   FIRST  WEEK  33 

a  letter  thrown  into  this  opening  will  descend  to  the  box  to 
which  the  postman  has  access.  My  attention  is  attracted  by 
a  mysterious  disk  covered  with  printed  characters,  to  which 
a  needle  is  attached  by  a  pivot.  My  guide  explains  to  me 
that  by  pressing  a  button  the  traveller  can  order  to  be  brought 
him  the  thing  to  whose  name  he  has  directed  the  point  of  this 
needle.  I  glance  at  the  curious  list,  and  perceive  that  I  may 
thus  procure  for  myself,  within  five  minutes,  the  whole  series 
of  cocktails  and  champagnes,  all  the  newspapers  and  reviews, 
a  one-  or  a  two-horse  carriage,  a  doctor,  a  barber,  a  railway 
ticket,  all  sorts  of  cold  or  warm  dishes,  or  a  theatre  ticket. 
The  only  wonder  is  that  the  machine  has  not  been  so  far  per 
fected  as  to  offer  the  means  of  being  married  or  divorced,  of 
making  one's  will,  and  of  voting. 

While  awaiting  these  necessary  improvements,  it  is  proper 
to  add  that  these  niceties  of  refinement  are  merely  comple 
mentary  to  others  more  appreciable.  You  can  count  the 
bedrooms  which  have  not  their  private  dressing-room,  with 
bath-room,  where  hot  and  cold  water  run  at  will  at  all  hours 
of  the  day  and  night.  And  with  this,  a  meaningless  luxury 
of  woodwork  and  draperies.  As  I  transcribe  these  notes,  I 
see  again  a  tiny  parlor  on  the  ninth  floor  of  one  of  these 
hotels,  at  the  corner  opposite  to  and  at  precisely  the  same 
height  as  the  clock  in  the  tower  of  a  neighboring  church. 
With  its  sofa  and  armchairs  of  Havana  silk,  its  narrow  bands 
of  soft  white  silk  on  the  tables  and  the  backs  of  chairs,  the 
light  mahogany  of  its  woodwork,  the  fine  quality  of  its  wicker 
chairs,  and  the  etchings  on  the  walls,  one  would  never  believe 
it  to  be  a  hotel  room,  to  be  let  for  the  day  or  night.  And 
there  are  two  hundred  of  these  bedrooms  and  parlors  in  this 
immense  building. 

Look  at  it  now  from  without,  and  consider  that  all  these 
apartments  are  warmed  by  an  apparatus  of  metal  tubes, 
through  which  hot  water  passes  up  or  down  at  the  turn  of  a 
D 


34  OUTRE-MER 

wheel;  that  electricity  lights  its  uttermost  corner  and  keeps 
everything  going,  from  the  bells  to  the  clocks;  that  gas  is  laid 
on  everywhere  alongside  of  the  electric  lights,  in  case  the 
latter  should  give  out.  Think  then  of  the  innumerable  quantity 
of  pipes  which  perforate  this  sort  of  living  creature  of  brick 
and  iron.  It  does  not  move,  indeed;  but  at  an  incredible 
distance  overhead  it  breathes  out  a  column  of  black  smoke, 
thick  as  that  of  a  steamer.  Think  what  human  ingenuity  is 
required  for  the  adjustment  of  so  many  small  pieces!  I 
counted,  in  my  visits  to  these  five  hotels,  five  different  sys 
tems  for  emptying  the  wash-basins  and  bath-tubs.  Translate 
this  humble  detail  into  concrete  reality.  It  means  that  five 
subtle  intellects,  at  the  service  of  five  men  determined  to 
make  a  fortune,  have  studied  this  apparently  childish  prob 
lem,  in  the  hope,  justified  by  the  result,  of  meeting  with 
capitalists  who  will  patronize  the  invention,  and  architects 
who  will  adopt  it.  Is  it  thus  from  the  small  to  the  great? 
Very  probably;  and  this  genius  of  novelty  is  evidently  in  its 
youth.  But,  seeing  what  a  travelling  American  requires  for 
his  occasional  shelter,  recognizing  how  much  money  is  nec 
essary  for  the  satisfaction  of  so  complicated  a  desire  for  com 
fort,  measuring  the  degree  of  ingenuity  here  attained  in 
making  matter  subserve  to  the  needs  of  man,  how  can  we 
admit  that  this  civilization  is  only  a  first  sketch?  It  is  at 
once  clearly  manifest,  to  him  who  reviews  it  without  preju 
dice,  that  these  are  signs  of  maturity  far  rather  than  of  experi 
ment  and  beginning.  But  New  York  does  not  sum  up  the 
whole  United  States,  any  more  than  Paris  sums  up  France, 
and  we  must  see. 

Thursday. —  Two  oases  in  the  tourist  existence  which  for 
four  days  I  have  been  leading  here.  A  luncheon  at  the  Play 
ers'  Club,  with  men  of  letters  connected  with  a  great  review, 
and  an  evening  at  the  theatre  with  another  literary  man,  who 


THE  FIRST   WEEK  35 

manages  an  important  newspaper.  I  jot  down  my  impres 
sions,  without  being  careful  to  connect  them  with  those  that 
have  gone  before,  quite  understanding  that,  though  it  is  always 
legitimate  to  set  down  physical  things,  one  must  exercise  great 
care  when  it  comes  to  moral  things.  I  hope  to  remain  in  the 
United  States  for  several  months,  that  my  judgment  of  these 
things  may  be  accurate. 

This  club  has  a  singular  history,  and  confirms  what  I  have 
often  heard  of  the  peculiar  position  of  comedians  in  America. 
It  was  founded  by  the  actor  Booth.  He  bought  the  house 
and  furnished  it.  He  adorned  it  with  precious  collections, 
gathered  by  his  own  care,  and  entirely  composed  of  objects 
which  have  to  do  with  the  theatre.  He  then  gave  it  to  the 
club,  reserving  the  right  to  occupy  one  apartment,  and  there 
he  died.  I  was  struck  by  the  extreme  decorum  of  the  sur 
roundings.  The  square  before  the  windows,  Gramercy  Park, 
looks  like  a  bit  of  Kensington.  The  respectability  of  the 
artist  is  written  everywhere,  and  a  thousand  details  attest  that 
it  is  not  personal  to  him;  I  mean  that  it  is  the  comedian's 
art  itself,  of  which  this  house  reveals  the  worship. 

Two  fine  portraits,  one  of  Booth  himself,  the  other  of  Jeffer 
son —  by  the  painter  Sargent  —  show  faces  deeply  moulded 
by  thought  and  will,  almost  too  intellectual  for  a  profession 
which  demands  more  of  instinct,  of  unconsciousness.  All 
the  other  actors  whose  pictures  adorned  the  walls  have  this 
same  expression,  grave  even  to  severity.  I  seemed  to  see 
in  them  the  energy  of  the  race  applied  to  culture.  One  must 
hear  the  Americans  utter  the  word  art,  all  by  itself,  without 
the  article,  to  understand  the  intense  ardor  of  their  desire  for 
refinement;  and  this  word  refined  also  recurs  continually  in 
the  conversation  of  the  members  with  whom  I  visited  the 
club. 

You  hear  few  or  no  anecdotes  of  private  life  in  the  conver 
sations  suggested  by  the  portraits.  On  the  other  hand,  I  am 


36  OUTRE-MER 

astonished  to  observe  how  carefully  they  guard  the  remem 
brance  of  the  slightest  shades  of  expression  observed  by  these 
actors  in  their  play,  and  especially  how  the  interpretation  of 
such  or  such  a  part  in  Shakespeare  fires  their  minds.  Once 
again  I  perceive  the  national  strength  of  this  poet's  genius,  L 
and  how  all  literature  derives  from  him  in  every  English-  1 
speaking  country.  Moliere  has  no  such  position  with  us,  nor 
Goethe  in  Germany.  Their  work  does  not  radiate  that  unique 
and  continuous  influence  which  Dante  also  exerts  over  the 
Italian  mind.  Perhaps  Americans  feel  a  more  passionate  at 
tachment  to  Shakespeare  than  even  the  English,  j  It  is  their 
way  to  cling  fast  to  a  tradition,  and  I  have  already  fancied 
more  than  once  that  I  perceived  the  sense  of  need  of  a  more 
distant  background  in  this  country,  where  all  is  present  and 
actual.  I  gained  a  new  proof  of  this,  though  a  very  slight 
one,  while  walking  out  with  one  of  my  companions  of  this 
morning,  who  directed  my  attention  to  two  lanterns  planted 
before  a  house. 

"They  were  put  there,"  he  said,  "during  the  time  when  the 
master  of  this  house  was  the  first  magistrate  of  New  York.  It 
is  the  custom.  He  died,  and  they  were  left  there.  You 
cannot  understand  that, —  you  who  live  in  a  country  which 
has  a  history, —  but  I  like  to  look  at  them  because  they  have 
been  there  for  twenty-five  years,  and  it  is  good  to  find  a  little 
of  the  past  in  a  city  so  new." 

Nothing,  on  the  other  hand,  can  be  more  exclusively  and 
absolutely  local  or  less  Shakespearian  than  the  play  to  which 
another  brother  journalist  took  me  in  the  evening. 

"  It  is  not  very  good,"  he  said,  "but  you  will  see  what  suits 
our  public." 

We  found  ourselves  in  a  little  theatre,  which  possessed  the 
peculiarity  of  having  almost  no  boxes.  No  New  York  theatre 
has  more,  except  the  Opera.  Is  it  due  to  want  of  skill,  or 
haste  in  the  construction  of  the  halls?  Is  it  the  wish  to  in- 


THE  FIRST  WEEK  37 

crease  the  number  of  sittings?  Is  it  a  sign  of  democratic 
manners?  Or  is  it  simply  the  ever-present  precaution  against 
fire?  However  this  may  be,  men  and  women  without  dis 
tinction,  and  of  almost  all  classes,  are  crowded  together  in 
the  orchestra  and  balcony.  They  follow  the  drama  with  pas 
sionate  interest,  though  they  already  know  it,  for  it  has  been 
given  an  incalculable  number  of  times.  Its  name  is  The  New 
South,  and  the  mere  title  of  the  piece  suggests  curious  differ 
ences,  not  only  of  manners  but  of  laws. 

A  Northern  officer,  stationed  in  the  South  a  few  years  after 
the  war,  finds  himself  involved  in  a  quarrel  with  the  brother 
of  his  fiance'e,  a  Georgia^  planter.  This  man  snatches  his 
sword  from  him  and  threatens  him.  The  officer  defends  him 
self  with  the  scabbard.  He  strikes  his  adversary  upon  the 
head,  and  the  latter  falls.  The  victor  hastens  to  seek  for  succor, 
and  during  his  absence  a  negro  whom  the  planter  had  formerly 
insulted,  and  who  sees  him  lying  unconscious,  cuts  the  plant 
er's  throat  with  the  officer's  sword.  The  latter,  convicted  of 
murder,  is  sentenced  to  perpetual  imprisonment.  His  fiance'e 
believes  in  him.  She  appeals  to  a  law  peculiar  to  that  State, 
which  authorizes  any  citizen,  with  the  authorization  of  the 
governor,  to  choose  a  convict  for  a  servant.  She  releases 
from  prison  the  supposed  murderer  of  her  brother  and  takes 
him  into  her  service,  that  he  may  prove  his  innocence.  The 
character  of  this  girl,  so  extraordinary  in  the  eyes  of  a  for 
eigner,  arouses  tempests  of  applause.  When  she  says  to  her 
father,  "Go  you  your  way;  I  will  go  mine,"  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  public  exceeds  all  bounds. 

The  personal  force  of  will,  the  impelling  power  of  con 
science  in  the  being  who  acts  according  to  its  dictates,  this, 
doubtless,  is  what  these  people  were  applauding.  By  contrast 
I  picture  to  myself  how  a  French  audience  would  receive  this 
girl's  attitude  toward  her  father.  I  must  believe  that  these 
spectators  do  not  look  upon  family  relations  precisely  as  we 


38  OUTRE-MER 

do;  for  peals  of  laughter  greeted  another  scene  which  would 
rudely  shock  a  Parisian  audience.  The  heroine's  sister  —  in 
love  with  a  doctor,  to  whom  she  first  makes  a  mock  declara 
tion  in  the  course  of  a  consultation  in  which  she  puts  out  a 
tongue  a  foot  long  —  surprises  her  father  in  the  act  of  asking 
the  hand  of  an  old  lady  in  marriage. 

The  insolent  girl's  boisterous  outburst  of  laughter,  as  she 
cuts  a  caper,  shaking  her  finger  at  the  old  gentleman,  appeared 
highly  gratifying  to  the  audience,  who  evidently  found  this 
absolute  equality  between  parents  and  children  the  most  nat 
ural  thing  in  the  world.  My  companion,  to  whom  I  made 
some  such  remark,  admitted  that  the  family  is  much  more 
united  with  us  than  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries,  and  notably 
than  in  America. 

"But,"  he  said,  "you  have  this  evil,  that  with  you  a  girl 
cannot  live  her  own  life  apart  from  her  family.  Her  parents 
love  her  too  much  and  she  loves  them  too  much.  She  never 
learns  to  depend  upon  herself.  She  has  no  '  self  -reliance,' 
as  we  say.  This  independence  of  ours  has  the  advantage  that 
a  young  woman  without  fortune  expects  to  earn  her  bread 
honestly  and  courageously,  like  a  man.  She  becomes  a  doc 
tor,  a  professor,  the  secretary  of  a  company,  no  matter  what, 
—  and  she  is  happy." 

Can  he  be  right  on  the  last  point?  Neither  he  nor  I  will 
ever  know.  As  I  make  my  way  homeward,  I  recall  to  mind, 
as  bearing  out  his  assertion,  the  few  minutes  after  luncheon 
which  I  spent  in  visiting  the  offices  of  the  Review  with  which 
my  hosts  of  the  Players  are  associated.  I  see  again  the  vari 
ous  women  there  engaged,  in  all  departments  of  the  work; 
one,  especially,  young  and  graceful,  seated  before  a  type 
writing  machine,  copying  a  manuscript.  Her  taper  fingers 
played  upon  the  keys  of  the  instrument  as  upon  those  of  a 
piano.  It  was  a  suitable  work,  dainty,  not  too  fatiguing,  and 
I  could  read  upon  her  charming  face  a  deep  serenity  of  con- 


THE   FIRST  WEEK  39 

science,  a  calm  will,  a  dignity  that  was  touching  in  a  creature 
so  young  and  evidently  so  poor.  Must  we  believe  that  the 
active  independence  of  such  a  woman  necessarily  results  in 
a  relaxation  of  family  ties?  It  is  possible,  after  all;  for  the 
continuance  of  the  family  appears  to  be  entirely  conditioned 
upon  the  right  of  primogeniture,  or  at  least  upon  freedom  of 
bequest,  and  upon  that  inequality  which  appears  to  be,  of  all 
others,  most  unjust, —  that  of  inheritance. 

Friday.  —  I  resume  my  journal  on  the  train  between  New 
York  and  Newport,  very  comfortably  settled  in  one  of  those 
Pullman  coaches  which  bear  the  pretentious  name  of  palace 
car.  By  way  of  parenthesis,  let  me  say,  that  though  I  have 
not  yet  been  a  week  in  the  United  States,  I  can  bear  witness 
to  the  habitual  excess  of  metaphor,  which  seems  to  be  an 
American  instinct.  The  most  insignificant  production  is 
advertised  as  "the  best  in  the  world."  A  victorious  pugilist 
becomes  "the  world's  champion."  I  happened  to  open  the 
annual  report  of  the  West  Point  Academy,  and  there  I  read, 
"Science  and  art,  in  which  the  cadets  excel." 

Where  does  naturalness  end?  Where  does  that  charlatan 
ism  begin,  which  is  so  well  defined  by  the  three  well-nigh 
untranslatable  words  which  we  are  beginning  to  adopt  and 
practise,  the  puff,  the  boom,  and  the  bluff  t  Certainly,  the 
splendors  of  a  real  palace  have  nothing  in  common  with  the 
lavish  elegance  of  these  long  carriages.  Such  as  they  are, 
their  luxury  puts  to  shame  the  best  European  railway  carriages. 

They  are  so  connected  as  to  form  a  covered  vestibule  from 
one  end  of  the  train  to  the  other.  A  buffet  is  attached  to 
them;  and,  if  the  journey  is  to  be  not  of  six  hours  but  of 
several  days,  bath-rooms,  a  barber's  shop,  and  a  reading-room 
will  be  added.  It  can  hardly  be  called  extravagance  to  travel 
in  them;  for  there  is  only  one  class  in  the  United  States,  and 
the  supplement  which  gives  a  right  to  seats  in  these  cars  is 


40  OUTRE-MER 

insignificant.  I  paid  only  a  dollar  for  my  Pullman  chair  from 
New  York  to  Newport. 

Here  again  are  fifty  signs  of  that  singular  bent  toward  com 
plexity  which  has  struck  me  every  moment  since  I  landed. 
Everything  is  fitted,  planned,  compressed,  so  as  to  get  the 
greatest  number  of  adjustable  articles  into  the  smallest  possi 
ble  space.  The  arm-chair  in  which  you  are  seated  turns  upon 
a  pivot,  and  may  be  tipped  to  any  angle  that  pleases  you.  If 
you  want  your  window  open,  a  negro  brings  a  metal  screen 
which  he  slips  into  grooves  cunningly  devised  between  the 
ledge  of  the  window  and  the  raised  sash.  If  you  desire  to 
take  luncheon,  play  cards,  or  write,  he  places  before  you  a 
table  which  rests  upon  the  floor  by  a  single  movable  foot,  the 
other  end  being  fitted  into  the  side  of  the  car.  Eoys  are  con 
tinually  passing  along,  offering  newspapers  and  books.  I 
distinguish  among  them  Alphonse  Daudet's  Sappho,  with 
a  second  title  added,  Or,  Lured  by  a  Bad  Woman's  Fatal 
Beauty  !  Everywhere  is  a  profusion  of  rugs,  draperies,  carved 
mahogany,  and  nickel-plated  ornaments.  The  very  negroes 
who  pass  back  and  forth,  now  in  uniform  and  now  in  white 
jacket  and  napkin,  seem  like  ornamental  animals,  a  whim  of 
the  company,  who  have  provided  for  my  benefit  this  outland 
ish  display.  Armed  with  a  sort  of  feather  brush,  which  they 
wield  with  simian  agility,  they  move  about  as  we  approach 
the  stations,  impartially  dusting  passengers  and  furniture,  and 
equally  without  consulting  their  wishes.  I  just  now  saw  one 
of  them  whisk  off  the  hat  of  an  old  gentleman  who  was  read 
ing  the  paper.  He  brushed  it,  and  replaced  it  upon  the 
sufferer's  head,  without  saying  with  your  leave  or  by  your 
leave.  The  old  gentleman  did  not  so  much  as  raise  his  eyes. 

Town  and  country  succeed  one  another.  The  train  passes 
at  full  speed  over  low  bridges,  spanning  broad  rivers  which 
flow  between  forests,  — remains  of  forests,  rather, — violated, 
massacred  forests,  whose  vigorous  vegetation  still  bears  wit- 


THE  FIRST  WEEK  41 

ness  to  the  primitive  splendor  of  this  country,  before  "the 
pale-faced  destroyer  of  forests  "  had  set  foot  upon  it.  Rows 
upon  rows  of  cottages,  without  gardens,  without  a  single  one 
of  those  little,  open-air  drawing-rooms  in  which  the  French 
citizen  loves  to  saunter,  pruning-shears  and  watering-pot  in 
hand.  But  where  shall  Americans  find  the  time  to  saunter, 
the  time  to  watch  the  budding  rose  trees,  to  let  themselves 
live?  Their  rose  trees  are  those  vast,  ever-multiplying  fac 
tory  chimneys.  Their  gardens  are  these  houses,  so  rapidly 
built  that  a  single  generation  sees  them  increase  fivefold,  ten 
fold,  and  more.  In  1800,  New  Haven,  through  which  we 
have  just  passed,  had  five  thousand  inhabitants;  to-day  it  has 
eighty  thousand,  and  its  commerce  is  valued  at  more  than  a 
hundred  and  fifty  million  francs  a  year.  A  little  way  back  it 
was  Bridgeport,  which  last  year  put  out  a  hundred  millions 
worth  of  sewing-machines  and  carriages;  or  Hartford,  where 
insurance  companies  have  an  aggregate  capital  of  seven  hun 
dred  millions  of  francs.  These  figures  become,  as  it  were, 
concrete  in  view  of  this  landscape,  which  they  explain  and 
with  which  they  blend,  so  many  are  the  steamboats  in  the 
most  insignificant  ports,  the  electric  railways  in  the  city 
streets,  the  factories  in  the  country  towns,  and  the  advertise 
ments,  advertisements,  everywhere.  I  had  taken  out  paper 
to  make  a  general  summary  of  the  impressions  of  this  first 
week.  I  cannot  do  it,  so  much  is  my  attention  absorbed  by 
the  medley  of  primitive  scenery  —  so  little  removed  from 
aboriginal  wildness  —  and  exaggerated  industrialism. 

There  is  hardly  any  motion  of  the  car,  notwithstanding  our 
great  speed.  A  pamphlet  by  one  of  our  most  distinguished 
engineers,  M.  de  Chasseloup-Laubat,1  which  I  read  before 
leaving  home,  had  already  explained  this  to  me,  pointing  out 
the  wisdom  with  which  the  builder  had  placed  the  long  car 

1  Travels  in  America,  chiefly  to  Chicago,  by  the  Marquis  of  Chasseloup- 
Laubat,  Paris,  1893. 


42  OUTRE-MER 

upon  small,  six-wheeled  trucks,  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  the 
seats  outside  of  the  axis  of  trepidation.  Through  this  pam 
phlet  I  also  made  acquaintance  with  the  locomotive,  that  strong 
and  beautiful  engine  of  speed,  here  built  very  high  and  so 
arranged  that  through  his  cab  windows  the  engineer  can  see 
the  track,  as  it  lies  ribbon-like  before  him.  All  the  mechan 
ism  —  cylinders,  valves,  levers  —  is  exposed,  and  within  easy 
reach.  The  forward  part  rests  upon  a  small  guiding  truck, 
which  admits  of  shorter  curves,  and  a  more  slightly  built  track. 
Who  invented  all  these  improvements?  Who  thought  out  all 
the  strangely  complicated  details  of  these  cars? 

The  answer  is  always  the  same;  everybody  and  nobody,  a 
will  always  under  control,  an  ever-watchful  eye,  an  intrepid 
search  for  novelty,  and  an  insatiable  longing  for  improvement, 
which,  so  far,  seems  to  me  the  most  marked  feature  of  Ameri 
can  civilization,  and  the  one  least  expected.  Nevertheless, 
if  I  were  obliged  to  return  to  Europe  to-morrow,  it  is  in  this 
thought  that  I  should  sum  up  the  impressions  of  my  first  rapid 
contact  with  this  people.  They  seem,  in  fact,  to  have  tri 
umphed  over  time,  since  this  extreme  attainment  of  luxury 
touches  so  closely  the  barbarism  of  the  West,  and  still  more 
undisguisedly  that  of  the  popular  quarters  of  New  York.  I 
am  curious  to  know  whether  I  shall  find  the  same  contrast,  the 
same  astonishing  differences  of  atmosphere,  in  the  watering- 
place  where  I  shall  be  this  evening,  and  of  which  all  the 
Americans  who  have  spoken  to  me  of  it  seem  a  little  proud 
and  a  little  ashamed. 

"There  is  only  one  Newport  in  the  world,"  they  say;  in 
variably  adding,  "But  Newport  is  only  a  clique  of  million 
aires,  only  a  'set ' ;  it  is  not  America." 

"Why  not  ?  "  I  have  several  times  asked. 

"You  will  understand  when  you  have  been  there,"  they 
reply,  no  less  invariably.  "There  are  more  millions  of  dol 
lars  represented  in  the  small  tip  of  that  little,  island  than  in 
all  London  and  Paris  together." 


Ill 

SOCIETY 
I.   A  Summer  City 

I  CAME  to  Newport  for  a  few  days.  I  have  remained  here 
a  whole  month,  taking  my  part  in  this  life  which  has  indeed 
no  counterpart,  at  least,  not  to  my  knowledge.  Neither  Deau- 
ville  nor  Brighton  nor  Biarritz  resembles  it,  nor  Cannes,  although 
the  last  approaches  it  in  the  splendor  of  its  villas  and  the 
almost  total  absence  of  the  lower  middle  class.  But  Cannes 
is  a  Cosmopolis  like  Rome  or  Florence,  perhaps  more  so,  while 
Newport  is  exclusively,  absolutely  American.  A  few  European 
visitors  have  passed  through  it  this  summer,  on  their  way  to 
Chicago  and  the  World's  Fair.  Usually  they  may  be  counted 
by  six  or  seven.  The  French  know  nothing  of  Newport.  The 
English  —  a  very  few  of  them  —  come  here  for  the  yachting ; 
but  they  prefer  the  Isle  of  Wight,  with  Cannes  and  the  con 
venient  Solent. 

The  small  number  of  travellers,  explained  by  its  remoteness 
and  the  shortness  of  the  season,  gives  this  watering-place  an 
inveterately  national  character.  No ;  this  elegant  coterie,  or, 
as  the  detractors  of  Newport  scornfully  call  it,  this  "  set,"  is 
not  America,  but  it  is  American  society ;  and  social  life,  empty 
and  artificial  as  it  may  appear  to  be,  is  always  bound  by  deep- 
lying  secret  fibres  to  the  country  of  which  it  is  the  flower  —  a 
flower  sometimes  insipid,  more  often  poisonous.  Even  when 
its  standards,  as  in  France,  are  totally  different  from  the  stand 
ards  of  the  country  in  general,  it  reveals  in  its  adherents  the 

43 


44  OUTRE-MER 

spiritual  faults  and  virtues  which  are  peculiar  to  the  race.  The 
idlers  bring  the  same  susceptibility,  the  same  temper,  the  same 
intelligence,  to  their  amusements,  or  their  attempts  at  amuse 
ment,  which  the  industrious  bring  to  their  toil. 

In  the  upper  circles  of  Parisian  life,  for  example,  all  the 
strength  and  all  the  weakness  of  the  French  nature  are  found 
devoted  to  the  arts,  to  luxury,  to  amusement.  Extreme  vivacity 
of  thought,  with  its  subtle  variations,  criticism  with  its  startling 
destruction  of  illusion  and  its  unexpected  betrayals  into  enthu 
siasm,  a  mad  hardihood  of  irony,  with  bondage  to  public 
opinion,  an  indescribable  mediocrity  of  human  nature,  an  air 
of  good  taste  even  in  folly,  above  all,  a  charm,  a  spirit  of 
sociability,  pervade  the  atmosphere  of  our  clubs,  our  salons, 
our  restaurants,  theatres,  promenades.  National  character  has 
always  its  own  shades  of  individuality  in  its  vices  and  its  vir 
tues,  its  frivolities  and  its  toils.  This  national  physiognomy 
is  what  we  have  to  discern ;  and  every  datum  is  of  value,  from 
the  hall  of  a  casino  to  a  church,  from  the  prattle  of  a  woman 
of  the  world  to  the  utterances  of  a  revolutionary  laborer. 

I  am  very  sure,  therefore,  that  any  one  who  has  eyes  to  see 
may  discern  the  American  spirit  —  the  real  interest  and  the 
chief  reason  of  my  journey — behind  the  ostentation  of  New 
port.  But  have  I  these  eyes  ?  At  any  rate,  here  is  a  bundle  of 
sketches  from  life  taken  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  in  response 
to  the  first  questions  which  one  naturally  asks  in  making  a  study 
of  people  of  the  world.  How  are  they  housed,  and  with  what 
furniture  do  they  surround  themselves?  How  do  they  recruit 
their  numbers?  How  do  they  amuse  themselves?  How  do 
they  converse  ?  More  general  inquiries  will  come  later,  if  they 
are  to  come  at  all. 

How  are  they  housed?  Detached  villas,  very  near  the 
street,  with  greenish,  most  velvety  lawns  and  bronze  figures 


SOCIETY  45 

under  the  trees  amid  clumps  of  blue  hortensias ;  porticoes 
before  the  doors,  over  which  flutters  the  Japanese  ivy,  rapid 
growing,  not  evergreen  like  the  other,  but  fading  every  season ; 
graceful  symbol  of  the  American  impatience  which  cannot 
wait.  There  are  twenty,  thirty,  forty  different  styles  of  con 
struction,  almost  as  many  as  there  are  dwellings  ;  some  square 
and  squat,  others  tall  and  slender,  others  slender  and  long; 
all  with  guillotine  and  bow  windows,  almost  all  of  painted 
wood,  which  clothes  them,  as  it  were,  in  a  thin  dark  sheath  of 
elegant  cleanliness  —  and  so  on  indefinitely  along  Bellevue 
Avenue,  Narragansett  Avenue,  all  the  streets  of  the  new  New 
port  which,  within  a  few  years,  the  caprice  of  millionaires  has 
built  upon  the  cliff;  for  this  part  of  the  town  has  only  yes 
terday  become  fashionable. 

The  other,  the  real  town,  is  down  near  the  shore,  with  modest 
little  houses  of  white  wood  which  have  a  grace  all  their  own. 
Somehow  they  suggest  the  cabin  of  primitive  times,  the  frail 
rustic  shelter  built  by  the  colonist's  own  hands,  in  this  land  of 
forests,  with  its  rough-hewn  beams  and  ill-matched  boards. 
To  this  day  stone  buildings  are  rare  in  the  United  States. 
Brick  and  iron  have  succeeded  to  wood.  To  quarry  and  dress 
stone  requires  too  much  both  of  time  and  labor. 

Between  old  Newport,  where  the  quiet  homely  life  keeps  on 
all  through  the  winter,  and  the  other,  the  summer  Newport, 
fashionable  and  transient,  there  is  no  intermediate.  Nothing 
suggests  the  rough  draught  of  a  watering-place  ;  first  efforts  cor 
rected,  worked  over  and  over,  a  gradual  encroachment  of 
fashion.  The  same  outbreak  of  individuality  which  reared  the 
palaces  of  Fifth  Avenue  in  New  York,  almost  as  by  Aladdin's 
lamp,  created  in  a  flash  of  miracle  this  town  of  cottages.  The 
only  difference  is  in  the  complicated  architecture  where  the 
rich  have  vied  with  the  rich  as  to  who  shall  excel  the  others. 
The  "go-ahead  "  American  spirit  is  seen  here  in  a  costliness  of 
construction  very  significant,  when  one  reflects  that  these  dwell- 


46  OUTRE-MER 

ings  do  duty  for  six  weeks,  perhaps  for  two  months,  in  the 
year,  and  that  each  one  takes  for  granted  such  accessories  as 
a  four-in-hand,  a  yacht,  or  perhaps  two,  for  cruising  along  the 
coast,  a  private  car  for  railway  journeys,  a  New  York  house 
and  another  country  house! 

One  of  these  men  has  spent  some  time  in  England,  and 
it  has  pleased  him  to  build  for  himself  on  one  of  these  Rhode 
Island  lawns  an  English  abbey  of  the  style  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
It  rises  up,  gray  and  stern,  so  like,  so  perfect,  that  it  might, 
without  changing  a  single  stone,  be  transported  to  Oxford  on 
the  shores  of  Isis,  to  make  a  pendant  to  the  delicious  cloister 
of  Magdalen  or  the  facade  of  Oriel.  Another  man  loves 
France,  and  he  has  seen  fit  to  possess  in  sight  of  the  Atlantic 
a  chateau  in  the  style  of  the  French  Renascence.  Here  is 
the  chateau ;  it  reminds  you  of  Azay,  Chenonceaux,  and  the 
Loire,  with  its  transparent  ribbon  of  water  winding  idly  in  and 
out  amid  the  yellow  sand  of  the  islands.  A  third  has  built 
a  marble  palace  precisely  like  the  Trianon,  with  Corinthian 
pillars  as  large  as  those  of  the  Temple  of  the  Sun  at  Baalbek. 
And  these  are  not  weak  imitations,  pretentious  and  futile 
attempts,  such  as  in  every  country  bring  ridicule  upon  brag 
garts  and  upstarts.  No.  In  detail  and  finish  they  reveal  con 
scientious  study,  technical  care.  Evidently  the  best  artist  has 
been  chosen  and  he  has  had  both  freedom  and  money. 

Especially  money  !  Caprices  like  these  take  for  granted 
such  quantities  of  it  that  after  a  walk  from  cottage  to  cottage, 
from  chateau  to  abbey,  you  half  fancy  that  you  have  been  vis 
iting  some  isle  consecrated  to  the  god  Plutus,  whose  most  mod 
ern  incarnation  is  the  god  Dollar.  But  this  is  a  Plutus  who 
yesterday  sat  at  the  hearthstone  of  Penia,  the  untamed  goddess 
of  poverty ;  a  Plutus  whom  neither  wealth  nor  luxury  has  ener 
vated  or  enfeebled ;  a  Plutus  who,  being  no  longer  obliged  to 
work,  wills  that  his  gold  shall  work,  that  it  shall  make  itself 
manifest,  spread  itself,  "  show  off,"  to  use  the  real  Yankee  word. 


SOCIETY  47 

And  this  gold  makes  itself  so  manifest,  it  shows  off  with  such 
violent  intensity,  that  it  impresses  you  like  the  deploying  of  an 
army.  Flaubert  wrote  to  one  of  his  pupils  :  "  If  you  cannot 
construct  the  Parthenon,  build  a  pyramid. "//All  America  seems 
to  be  instinctively  repeating  to  itself  in  other  words  this  stern 
but  stimulating  counsel.//  As  in  the  harbor  and  streets  of  New 
York  you  are  dismayed  at  so  much  activity,  so  in  these  New 
port  avenues  you  are  amazed  at  so  mucn  wealth.  It  either 
revolts  or  charms  you,  according  as  you  lean  toward  socialism 
or  snobbery.  The  psychologist  who  looks  upon  a  city  as  a 
naturalist  looks  upon  an  ant-hill,  will  recognize  in  it  the  fact 
which  I  observed  at  the  very  first,  —  something  indescribably 
extravagant,  unbridled.  The  American  spirit  seems  not  to 
understand  moderation.  Their  high  business  buildings  are  too 
high.  Their  pleasure-houses  are  too  elegant.  Their  fast  trains 
go  too  fast.  Their  newspapers  have  too  many  pages  ;  too  much 
news.  And  when  they  set  themselves  to  spend  money,  they  are 
obliged  to  spend  too  much  in  order  to  have  the  feeling  of  spend 
ing  enough. 

How  do  they  furnish  their  houses  ? 

I  have  in  mind,  as  I  write  these  words,  the  interior  of  some 
fifty  of  these  villas,  perhaps  more.  From  the  week  of  my 
arrival,  upon  the  presentation  of  my  letters  of  introduction,  I 
was  caught  up  in  the  whirlwind  of  luncheons,  coaching-parties, 
yachtings,  dinners,  and  balls,  which  for  several  weeks  sweeps 
over  Newport  like  a  simoom.  "  Be  in  the  rush,"  says  an  adver 
tisement  in  the  electric  car  which  runs  between  the  beach  and 
the  lower  town.  A  recommendation  of  a  special  brand  of 
yeast  accompanies  this  eloquent  appeal,  this  "  all  aboard  " 
which  the  Americans  speedily  force  you  to  act  upon. 

Their  energy  extends  even  to  their  hospitality,  which  bestirs 
itself  in  your  behalf,  multiplying  its  "  five-o'clock  teas  "  and  its 
"  to  meets."  It  is  a  warm  spontaneity  of  welcome  of  which  we 


48  OUTRE-MER 

have  no  notion  in  Latin  countries.  With  us  the  foreigner  may 
get  into  society  if  he  settles  down  and  does  us  the  honor  of 
preferring  our  country  to  his  own.  As  for  him  who  is  simply 
passing  through  not  to  return,  it  takes  us  some  time  to  over 
come  a  certain  distrust ;  we  do  not,  without  a  thorough  ac 
quaintance,  pass  over""  from  formal  courtesy  to  intimacy.  The 
American  throws  his  house  wide  open  to  you  as  soon  as  you 
are  duly  presented.  He  wants  you  to  know  his  friends ;  he 
wants  all  his  friends  to  treat  you  as  he  does. 

Slanderers  say  that  there  is  no  merit  in  this ;  that  their  large 
,way  of  living  prevails  in  all  Anglo-Saxon  countries  where  chil- 
;'  dren  are  many,  needs  complicated,  incomes  proportionately 
large,  and  economy  unknown.  One  more  guest  hardly  counts 
in  such  a  home.  This  is  true.  Still  I  think  I  perceive  here  a 
feeling  more  complex  than  that  opulent  and  indifferent  hospi 
tality  which  is  still  that  of  wealthy  Orientals. 

The  American,  who  lives  so  fast,  carries  to  the  highest  pitch 
a  fondness  for  seeing  himself  live.  It  seems  as  if  he  looked 
upon  himself  and  his  surroundings  in  the  light  of  a  singular 
experiment  in  social  life,  and  as  if  he  hardly  knew  what  he 
ought  to  think  of  it.  He  makes  it  a  point  that  you,  a  Euro 
pean,  shall  be  correctly  informed  before  judging  of  this  experi 
ment,  and  he  helps  to  inform  you.  "You  see  such  or  such  a 
one,"  he  will  say  to  you.  "He  is  an  American  of  this  or  that 
type.  Read  such  a  book — you  will  find  there  a  true  picture 
of  the  American  of  that  State."  If  he  knows  that  you  are 
travelling  for  the  purpose  of  taking  notes,  he  is  disturbed,  and 
yet  he  finds  pleasure  in  it  as  an  act  of  homage.  He  wants 
your  notes  to  be  taken  from  life.  If  he  sees  in  you  a  simple 
tourist,  he  wants  your  reports  when  you  return  home  to  be 
something  other  than  the  erroneous  legends  of  which,  to  his 
exasperation,  he  finds  traces  in  our  newspapers.  There  is  a 
curious  mixture  of  doubt  and  pride  in  the  pleasure  which  he 
feels  in  escorting  you  from  one  end  of  his  house  to  the  other, 


SOCIETY  49 

showing  you  in  a  breath  the  picture  gallery  and  the  linen 
closet,  the  drawing-rooms  and  the  bed-chambers.  One  of 
their  best  novelists,  Howells,  has  sagaciously  noted  this  peculiar 
trait  of  character,  this  facility  of  offering  oneself  as  a  lesson  of 
things. 

"  We  men  of  the  modern  world,"  says  March,  in  A  Hazard 
of  New  Fortunes,  "  are  inclined  to  take  ourselves  too  objec 
tively,  to  consider  ourselves  more  representative  than  is 
necessary." 

Meanwhile,  to  the  professional  observer  this  turn  of  mind 
lightens  half  his  task.  It  is  so  difficult  in  Italy,  Spain,  Ger 
many,  in  France  itself,  to  picture  to  oneself  the  "  home  "  of 
those  we  know  the  best,  and  yet  the  witness  that  tells  the  most 
is  the  objects  which  we  gather  around  us  according  to  our  own 
whims.  A  drawing-room,  a  bed-chamber,  a  dining-room,  have 
a  physiognomy,  almost  a  countenance,  in  the  likeness  of  our 
tastes,  our  needs,  the  things  in  ourselves  which  often  we  our 
selves  do  not  suspect. 

A  first  impression  emerges  from  the  homes  of  Newport.  It 
ought  to  be  correct,  so  much  does  it  accord  with  the  rest  of 
American  life,  even  outside  of  villas  like  these.  This  is  a  new 
evidence  of  excess,  abuse,  absence  of  moderation.  On  the 
floors  of  halls  which  are  too  high  there  are  too  many  precious 
Persian  and  Oriental  rugs.  There  are  too  many  tapestries,  too 
many  paintings  on  the  walls  of  the  drawing-rooms.  The  guest- 
chambers  have  too  many  bibelots,  too  much  rare  furniture,  and 
on  the  lunch  or  dinner  table  there  are  too  many  flowers,  too 
many  plants,  too  much  crystal,  too  much  silver. 

At  this  moment  I  can  see  in  the  centre  of  one  of  these 
tables  a  vase  of  solid  silver,  large  and  deep  as  the  pot  of  a 
huge  plant,  too  small,  however,  for  a  bunch  of  grapes,  a  prodi 
gal  bunch  with  grapes  as  large  as  small  cannon  balls.  I  see 
again  a  screen  made  of  an  Italian  painting  of  the  school  of  the 


50  OUTRE-MER 

Carracci,  cut  into  four  parts.  The  canvas  has  not  been  much 
injured  and  the  work  was  well  done,  but  what  a  symbol  of  this 
perpetual  extravagance  of  luxury  and  refinement ! 

This  excess  has  its  prototype  in  the  rose  so  justly  called 
the  "American  beauty,"  enormous  bunches  of  which  crown 
these  tables.  It  has  so  long  a  stem,  it  is  so  intensely  red, 'so 
wide  open,  and  so  strongly  perfumed,  that  it  does  not  seem 
like  a  natural  flower.  It  requires  the  greenhouse,  the  exposi 
tion,  a  public  display.  Splendid  as  it  is,  it  makes  one  long 
for  the  frail  wild  eglantine  with  its  rosy  petals  which  a  breath 
of  wind  will  crumple.  For  the  eglantine  is  a  bit  of  nature,  and 
also  of  aristocracy,  at  least  in  the  sense  in  which  we  Europeans 
understand  the  word,  for  with  us  it  is  inseparable  from  an  idea 
of  soft  coloring  and  absence  of  pretension.  It  is  certain  that 
this  excess  reveals  in  this  people  an  energy  much  more  like 
that  of  the  Renascence,  for  example,  under  divers  forms,  than 
that  meagreness  of  individuality  which  we  moderns  disguise 
under  the  name  of  distinction.  That  vigor  of  blood  and 
nerves  which  has  enabled  the  men  of  the  United  States  to 
conquer  fortune,  persists  in  him  through  all  his  fortunes  and 
manifests  itself  by  splendor  within  the  house  as  it  was  first 
manifested  by  splendor  outside  of  it.  You  find  vigor  every 
where,  even  in  the  senseless  prodigalities  of  high  life.  ™ 

Yet,  these  millionaires  do  not  entirely  accept  themselves. 
This  is  the  second  impression  forced  upon  you  by  a  more  atten 
tive  observation  of  these  "  halls  "  and  drawing-rooms.  They 
do  not  admit  that  they  are  thus  different  from  the  Old  World,  or 
if  they  admit  it,  it  is  to  insist  that  if  they  chose  they  could  equal 
the  Old  World,  or,  at  least,  could  enjoy  it. 

"  We  have  made  money  enough  to  be  artists  now,"  said  an 
architect  to  me,  "and  we  have  no  time  to  wait.  So  I  am  studying 
the  French  eighteenth  century ;  I  intend  to  build  houses  of  that 
type,  with  every  modern  improvement, — water,  light,  electricity." 


SOCIETY  51 

His  patriotism  is  perfectly  sincere,  very  intense,  and  he  makes 
it  consist  in  the  conquest  or  at  least  the  loan  of  a  foreign  style  ! 
The  furnishings  of  the  Newport  houses  betray  a  similar  effort, 
— a  constant,  tireless  endeavor  to  absorb  European  ideas.  One 
might  count  in  these  villas  all  the  articles  made  in  America. 
It  is  in  Europe  that  the  silk  of  these  stuffed  chairs  and  these 
curtains  was  woven ;  in  Europe  that  these  chairs  and  tables 
were  turned.  This  silverware  came  from  Europe,  and  this 
dress  was  woven,  cut,  sewn  in  Europe ;  these  shoes,  stockings, 
gloves  came  from  there.  "When  I  was  in  Paris  ;  "  "Then  we 
go  to  Paris  ;  "  "  We  want  to  go  to  Paris  to  buy  our  gowns." 

These  expressions  continually  recur  in  conversation,  and  it 
was  certainly  a  Parisian  salon  which  served  as  model  of  the  one 
in  which  you  find  yourself.  These  toilettes  are  surely  modelled 
on  the  same  pattern  as  those  of  the  elegant  Parisian  women. 
Only,  drawing-room  and  dresses  alike  have,  like  everything  else, 
that  indescribable  something  too  much.  The  fashion  of  these 
gowns  is  not  of  to-day  but  of  to-morrow.  The  dressmakers 
have  a  very  expressive  way  of  noting  this  almost  indescribable 
shade  of  difference.  They  say,  "  We  will  try  the  new  designs 
first  on  the  foreigners  —  then  we  shall  weed  them  out  for  the 
Parisian  women." 

Thus  is  explained  this  characteristic  of  the  excessive ;  this 
art  of  being  on  dress  parade,  which  these  women  —  often  so 
beautiful  —  still  further  heighten  by  a  profusion  of  jewels  worn 
in  daylight.  At  noon  they"Vvill  have  at  their  waists  turquoises 
as  big  as  almonds,  pearls  as  large  as  filberts  at  their  throats, 
rubies  and  diamonds  as  large  as  their  finger-nails.  Yes,  it  is 
indeed  Europe,  but  overgrown,  exaggerated ;  and  this  inordi 
nate  imitation  only  accentuates  the  difference  between  the  Old 
World  and  the  New. 

Among  the  freaks  of  decoration  thus  borrowed  from  our 
country,  one  has  become  singularly  changed  during  its  passage 


52  OUTRE-MER 

of  the  Atlantic.  I  speak  of  the  taste  for  old  things  —  the  fancy 
for  bric-a-brac  and  bibelots  so  characteristic  of  our  age.  It 
has  become  hateful  to  us,  because  universal  competition  has 
so  raised  the  prices  that  very  few  European  fortunes  are  large 
enough  to  permit  it.  Counterfeiting  has  followed,  and  second- 
rate  articles  are  especially  abundant. 

The  Americans  have  come  to  market  with  their  full  purses. 
With  us  a  millionaire  is  a  man  who  has  a  million  francs.  Here 
a  millionaire  is  one  who  has  a  million  dollars ;  that  is,  five 
million  francs.  They  have  brought  to  market  that  universal 
knowledge  which  comes  from  the  constant  habit  of  having 
seriously  undertaken  collecting  and  looked  at  it  in  the  light  of 
a  true  lesson  in  things.  For  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years, 
thanks  to  their  full  purses,  they  have  laid  hands  upon  the  finest 
pictures,  tapestries,  carvings,  medals,  not  only  of  France,  Eng 
land,  Holland,  Italy,  but  also  of  Greece,  Egypt,  India,  Japan. 
Hence  they  have  in  their  town  and  country  houses  a  wealth 
of  masterpieces  worthy  of  a  museum.  In  some  Newport  villas 
which  I  could  name,  is  an  entire  private  gallery,  which  has 
been  transported  thither  bodily ;  its  original  owner  having 
spent  years  in  collecting  it  from  among  the  rarest  works  of  the 
early  German  school.  And  they  keep  on  in  this  way  !  The 
other  day  I  heard  an  amateur  say  sadly,  alluding  to  the  finan 
cial  crisis  which  happens  to  bear  heavily  upon  Italy  and  the 
United  States  at  once  :  — 

"  The  Italians  are  rather  low  down  just  now,  and  there  are 
things  to  be  had  sub  rosa.  But  at  present  nobody  can  profit 
by  it." 

One  asks  oneself  where  they  would  put  these  Italian  things, 
so  completely  covered  by  paintings  is  the  Cordovan  leathei 
which  covers  the  walls  of  their  houses.  And  then  there  are 
the  glass  cases  under  which  treasures  of  cut  stones  await  the 
magnifying-glass,  with  enamels,  engraved  armor,  ancient  books, 
medals,  especially  portraits.  In  two  adjacent  villas,  a  quarter 


SOCIETY  53 

of  an  hour  apart,  I  thus  saw  the  portrait  of  a  great  Genoese 
seigneur,  a  Venetian  admiral,  an  English  lord  of  the  last  cen 
tury,  that  of  Louis  XV.  by  Vanloo,  with  the  inscription  "  Given 
by  the  King,"  that  of  Louis  XIV.  by  Mignard,  with  the  same 

inscription,  that  of  Henry  IV.  by  Porbus.  F ,  who  does 

not  like  the  Americans,  said  to  me  with  irony  :  — 

"  Yes ;  they  have  the  portrait  of  the  great  King,  but  where 
is  their  grandfather's  portrait?" 

And  he  attributes  this  love  of  old  pictures  to  a  vague  and 
awkward. attempt  to  make  a  false  gallery  of  ancestors.  In  my 
opinion  he  does  not  recognize  the  sincerity,  almost  the  pathos, 
of  this  love  of  Americans  for  surrounding  themselves  with 
things  around  which  there  is  an  idea  of  time  and  of  stability. 
This  sensation,  so  difficult  for  us  to  conceive,  and  which  my 
companion  of  the  Players  artlessly  expressed  to  me  in  New 
York,  is  intelligible  to  me,  and  after  these  few  weeks  of  the 
United  States  I  feel  it  myself.  It  is  almost  a  physical  satisfac 
tion  of  the  eyes  to  meet  here  the  faded  colors  of  an  ancient 
painting,  the  blurred  stamp  of  an  antique  coin,  the  softened 
shades  of  a  tapestry  of  the  Middle  Ages.  In  this  country, 
where  everything  is  of  yesterday,  they  hunger  and  thirst  for  the 
long  ago.  We  must  believe  that  the  soul  of  man  is  possessed 
by  an  indestructible  desire  to  be  surrounded  with  things  of 
the  past,  since  these  extravagances  of  luxury  subserve  such  a 
desire.  They  do  not  discern  it  in  themselves,  but  they  feel 
it  all  the  same.  Last  week  one  of  these  men  ordered  his  car 
riage  to  turn  back  that  he  might  show  me  the  statue  of  a  New- 
porter  who  was  a  friend  of  his  grandfather. 

"  One  likes  to  think  of  a  time  so  far  away,"  he  said. 

This  desire  for  a  deeply  prepared  soil  is  just  what  a  tree 
would  feel  on  being  transplanted  to  a  new  place  with  its  roots 
too  near  the  surface.  This  unconscious  effort  to  surround 
themselves  with  the  past,  to  ennoble  themselves  by  it,  is  what 
saves  these  homes  of  millionaires  from  being  coarse,  so  formed 


54  OUTRE-MER 

by  sheer  force  of  money,  and  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that 
they  were  so  formed.  It  is  an  unexpected  bit  of  poetry  in 
what  but  for  that  would  be  merely  "the  apotheosis  of  the  check 
and  the  chic,"  to  repeat  a  low  pleasantry  of  a  very  low  song  of 
a  former  day.  It  consoles  one  for  seeing  strewed  about  among 
these  magnificences  a  few  inexpressibly  vulgar  and  childish 
ornaments  such  as  an  outrageous  toy,  —  a  moon-faced  doll  with 
an  eyeglass  and  a  tall  hat,  smoking  a  lighted  cigarette,  while  a 
music  box  hidden  in  its  body  plays  a  vulgar  air.  Written  below 
it,  to  the  shame  of  those  writers  who  first  made  use  of  the 
expression,  are  the  words,  "Fin  de  siecle."  What  a  mosaic  is 
the  taste  of  this  race  which  takes  everything  pell-mell  from  our 
civilization,  the  excellent  and  the  bad,  our  finest  works  of  art 
and  our  most  deplorable  caricatures  ! 

How  do  they  recruit  their  numbers  ?  By  a  single  method 
and  from  a  single  class.  In  this  respect,  when  we  compare 
this  summer  Newport  with  our  Deauville,  or  with  Brighton  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Channel,  there  is  a  never-to-be-forgotten 
difference.  There  is  here  no  upper  class,  as  in  England,  no 
aristocratic  Olympus  whose  customs  are  followed  by  all  "  tuft- 
hunters  " —  the  picturesque  word  with  which  Oxford  students 
banter  those  of  their  comrades  who  are  trying  to  get  into  the 
smart  set,  hypnotized  by  the  golden  tassel  that  dangles  from 
the  caps  of  the  students  who  belong  to  the  nobility.  There  is 
not  here  as  in  France  that  irrational  but  potent  survival  of  an 
ancient  order  in  the  very  midst  of  a  vigorous  democracy,  whose 
most  expressive  sign  is  without  doubt  our  notion  of  the  "  club." 
With  us  the  "  circle  "  has  ceased  to  be  the  natural,  almost  the 
necessary,  sphere  of  those  who  keep  up  a  certain  style.  It  has 
come  to  be  a  sort  of  brevet,  almost  a  rank,  in  an  undetermined 
social  regiment,  the  staff  of  which  lives  at  the  Union,  the  Jockey, 
or  the  Rue  Royale. 

In  America  all  men  in  society  have  been  and  still  are  busi- 


SOCIETY  55 

ness  men.  They  were  not  born  to  social  station ;  they  have 
achieved  it.  They  did  not  find  it  ready  made  and  handed 
over  to  them.  They  made  it  themselves,  because  it  suited 
them  to  add  such  a  refinement  to  their  wealth,  by  way  of  cop 
ing  to  their  edifice.  The  result  is  a  profound  equality  among 
them,  a  singular  uniformity  of  habits,  thought,  tastes,  which 
speak  their  absolute  similarity  of  origin.  The  attempt  has 
indeed  been  made,  of  late  years,  to  break  up  this  uniformity, 
to  establish  an  artificial  Olympus,  that  of  the  "  four  hundred," 
which  are  drawn  from  the  families  of  oldest  traditions  and  most 
wealth.  This  whim  could  not  be  carried  out,  because  the  true 
foundations  of  all  these  great  fortunes  are  too  recent,  too  well 
known ;  and  besides,  they  could  not  be  kept  up  without  a  con 
tinuance  of  the  toil  which  produced  them.  Such  a  one  became 
rich  through  the  discovery  of  a  gold  mine  twenty-five  years  ago. 
A  railroad  built  in  1860  made  such  a  one  a  millionaire.  Behind 
each  of  the  names  which  appear  in  the  newspaper  reports  of 
social  functions,  any  American  can  see  this  or  that  factory, 
commercial  house,  bank,  land  speculation,  and  generally  the 
factory  is  at  full  blast,  the  wickets  of  the  commercial  house  and 
the  bank  are  always  open,  the  speculation  is  still  going  on. 
Democrats  may  say  that  such  titles  to  a  place  in  society  are 
worth  quite  as  much  as  a  coat  of  arms  crossed  by  bastardy  or 
doubtful  marriages,  or  a  historic  celebrity  which  has  no  coun 
terpart  in  those  that  inherit  it.  Certain  it  is  that  the  founda 
tions  of  American  society  are  frankly  evident.  Their  immedi 
ate  results  are  no  less  so. 

First  among  them  is  the  almost  total  absence  of  adventurers 
and  adventuresses  in  a  watering-place  like  Newport.  It  is  easy 
to  deceive  a  composite  society,  but  not  a  society  of  business 
men.  A  family  whose  revenues  are  doubtful  may  make  a  figure 
in  a  circle  where  the  authentic  nobility  must  needs  resort  to 
expedients  for  its  support,  in  which  reigns  that  spirit  of  shifti 
ness  in  money  matters  which  is  habitual  with  those  who  earn 


56  OUTRE-MER 

nothing.  In  America,  every  one  knows  what  his  neighbor  is 
"  worth,"  and  besides,  society  life  is  here  a  luxury,  while  the 
minor  daily  expenses  are  so  great  as  to  be  unsupportable  by  an 
ill-balanced  budget. 

French  novelists  since  Balzac  have  often  painted  the  type  of 
the  ambitious  poor  young  man  who  keeps  himself  in  the  full 
current  of  high  life  by  the  superior  management  of  very  mod 
est  resources.  Here  a  presentable  evening  suit  costs  a  hun 
dred  and  fifty  dollars,  —  seven  hundred  and  fifty  francs,  —  a 
carriage  to  go  to  dinner  costs  three  dollars,  and  five  if  you  also 
return  by  carriage.  A  woman  pays  fifty  per  cent  duty  on  the 
evening  dress  she  brought  from  Paris.  The  New  York  dress 
makers'  and  milliners'  bills  come  up  to  about  the  same,  figure. 
It  is  hardly  an  economy  to  have  a  seamstress  in  the  house  to 
copy  the  models  of  the  great  dressmakers,  —  that  resource  of 
the  prudent  Parisian  woman,  —  in  a  place  where  a  clever  maid 
has  forty  dollars  a  month  and  a  good  dressmaker  three  dollars 
a  day.  This  sort  of  abuse  of  wealth,  not  peculiar  to  Newport 
but  found  all  over  America,  is  at  once  a  folly  and  a  purifying 
process.  We  may  rail  at  the  frivolity  of  this  existence,  con 
demn  its  extravagance.  It  may  deserve  many  satires.  It  is  at 
least  very  upright  and  very  sound. 

(It  is  all  that,  in  this  summer  sojourn;  witness  the  total 
suppression  of  the  element  which  in  Europe  adorns  and  cor 
rupts  so  many  watering-places  —  I  refer  to  the  demi-monde.) 
As  American  society  is  principally  drawn  from  business  circles, 
the  men  have  but  little  leisure.  They  are  all  absent  several 
days  in  the  week,  occupied  in  making  the  money  which  it  is 
the  function  of  their  wives  to  display.  It  follows  that  if  they 
have  relations  outside  of  their  own  homes,  they  are  not  to  be 
found  here.  Those  who  remain  in  Newport  the  whole  week 
round  are  few  in  number,  and  for  the  most  part  old,  since  they 
are  "  out  of  business,"  or  very  young  and  not  yet  in  it.  A  few 
diplomatists  on  their  vacation  and  a  few  flying  visitors  complete 


SOCIETY  57 

the  masculine  part  of  society,  the  smallness  of  whose  number 
would  compel  them  to  good  conduct  if,  indeed,  their  inherited 
puritan  morality,  always  present  in  a  country  of  Anglo-Saxon 
traditions,  —  at  least  under  the  form  of  hypocrisy,  —  did  not 
make  all  scandal  impossible. 

For  that  matter,  by  what  diplomatic  processes  would  the 
most  adroit  member  of  the  demi-monde  succeed  in  brushing  up 
against  the  real  society,  in  offering  a  facile  imitation  of  it,  as 
with  us,  in  a  circle  where  all  forms  of  pleasure  are  organized 
into  a  club  and  one  must  have  an  admission,  a  presentation, 
patronage,  in  order  to  take  a  cup  of  tea  here,  to  play  a 
game  of  tennis  there?  More  than  this,  the  race  is  not  old 
enough  for  the  courtesan  to  have  become  the  petted  but  re 
fined  creature,  scoffing  and  witty,  who  amuses  a  man  and  little 
by  little  makes  her  way  into  his  daily  intimacy.  Simply  to 
recognize  how  entirely  she  is  absent  from  a  city  which  elsewhere 
would  be  her  favorite  field  of  operation  is  to  see  that  she  is 
here  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  mere  instrument  of  pleasure. 
Theo,  who  has  lived  ten  years  in  the  United  States,  said  to  me,  — 

"Women  are  not  necessary  to  Americans  as  they  are  to  us. 
A  man  only  goes  with  them  here  when  he  is  slightly  drunk  and 
wants  to  keep  it  up." 

It  is  possible  that  the  sentimentality  which  gives  a  touch  of 
tenderness  to  gallantry  in  France  is  in  certain  respects  more 
human.  Socially  the  American  is  right ;  I  mean  that  the  sharp 
line  of  demarcation  between  the  women  of  his  own  circle  and 
the  others  makes  him  look  upon  the  former  with  quite  other 
eyes.  He  respects  them  more  in  his  imagination  and  in  his 
conduct.  He  may  be  a  profligate ;  he  is  never  or  very  rarely 
a  libertine.  The  distance  between  the  two  words  is  great.  The 
proof  is  found  in  the  conversation  of  young  men  at  the  clubs. 
They  talk  of  sport,  of  play,  of  business,  but  the  name  of  a 
woman  is  never  uttered. 


58  OUTRE-MER 

The  common  origin  of  the  social  forces,  if  I  may  so  call  it, 
has  also  this  result,  that  social  life  finds  its  end  and  aim  in 
itself.  All  the  families  included  in  it  being  rich,  and  aspiring 
to  nothing  else  to  which  it  can  help  them,  the  result  is  that  the 
atmosphere  is  more  simple,  happy,  innocent,  than  any  we  know. 
There  is  less  secrecy  in  personal  relations,  because  they  are  not 
nor  can  be  the  means  of  self-advancement.  The  wealthy 
classes  of  America  having  no  sort  of  influence  over  the  elec 
tions,  an  ambitious  politician  has  no  use  for  society.  There  is 
no  Institute  toward  which  the  favor  of  a  social  set  may  advance 
a  writer  or  an  artist.  Nor  is  there  any  group  of  salons  whence 
literary  reputations  may  radiate.  It  is  only  exceptionally  that 
daughters  are  dowered,  so  that  the  number  who  seek  fortune 
through  marriage  is  limited  to  ruined  foreigners  of  title,  and 
these  generally  disappear  after  a  season.  They  quickly  dis 
cover  that  old  Europe  is  still  the  safest  field  for  this  sort  of 
speculation. 

As  on  the  other  hand  morals  appear  to  be  especially  good  and 
an  acknowledged  liaison  is  a  phenomenon  here,  social  life  can 
not  serve  as  a  screen  for  the  complications  of  amatory  experi 
ence.  Thus  reduced  to  its  true  basis,  social  life  turns  its  efforts 
into  the  line  of  public  pageantry  and  outward  display,  and  as  it 
must  always  have  a  genuine  aliment,  a  positive  occupation  for 
its  vigorous  activities,  society  life  in  this  country  tends  to  give 
itself  up  entirely  to  sport.  Here,  again,  that  which  is  essentially 
a  fault  becomes  a  source  of  health,  so  true  it  is  that  with  strong 
races  everything  ministers  to  their  strength,  while  among  a 
decaying  people  even  culture  and  refinement  lead  to  nothing 
but  disease  and  decay. 

How  do  they  amuse  themselves?  That  I  might  answer  this 
question  with  some  sort  of  correctness,  I  have  amused  myself 
with  following,  hour  by  hour,  for  several  days  together,  the 
way  in  which  those  of  the  women  who  are  what  is  called 


SOCIETY  59 

"leaders  in  society"  employ  their  time.  I  transcribe  one  of 
the  sketches  I  thus  made,  taking  it  at  random  from  twenty 
others.  They  are  all  pretty  much  alike  in  respect  of  the 
powerful  physique,  which  they  take  for  granted,  the  fondness 
for  the  open  air  and  exercise.  This  way  of  amusing  them 
selves  explains  why  these  women  of  the  world,  instead  of 
having  a  ruined  digestion,  pale  cheeks,  "an  old-glove  air,"  — 
to  quote  a  wicked  humorist, —  like  so  many  of  their  sisters  in 
European  capitals,  still  retain  their  brilliant  complexions, 
their  supple  motions,  their  strong  vitality.  They  know  this, 
and  are  proud  of  it. 

"What  pleases  me  in  the  fact  that  I  am  an  American,"  said 
one  of  them,  "  is  the  thought  that  I  belong  to  a  fine,  healthy 
race." 

I  remember,  too,  with  what  contempt  another,  speaking  of 
an  actress  of  the  Odeon,  who  was  in  New  York  for  a  month, 
described  her  as  "That  little  woman  with  a  wishy-washy 
complexion."  They  are  inexhaustible  in  their  criticisms  of 
Parisian  women.  I  remember  that  another  of  them,  deplor 
ing  the  change  in  one  of  her  countrywomen  recently  married 
to  a  Frenchman,  said,  "  She  was  so  plump,  with  so  good  a  com 
plexion,  and  now  she  has  become  thin  and  quite  sallow." 

They  smile  when  thus  speaking,  with  that  gratified  smile  of 
theirs,  so  difficult  for  us  to  understand  in  its  respectable  ani 
malism,  with  their  polished  teeth,  in  which  the  dentist  has 
put  bits  of  gold  that  shine  so  brightly  as  not  to  appear  in  the 
least  like  a  blemish. 

The  young  woman  whose  striking  image  I  now  invoke  was 
in  the  saddle  before  nine  in  the  morning,  after  one  of  those 
hearty  breakfasts  which  the  Anglo-Saxons  find  necessary,  the 
meal  at  which  they  gain  strength  for  all  the  demands  of  the 
day.  She  has  trotted  and  galloped  for  two  hours  in  the  salt 
air,  returning  at  eleven,  in  time  to  change  her  gown  and  go 
to  the  Casino,  where  there  is  a  tennis  tournament.  Two  of 


60  OUTRE-MER 

her  friends,  a  girl  and  a  young  woman  two  years  married,  are 
to  take  part  in  it.  This  is  the  fashionable  place  of  meeting 
in  Newport, —  this  square  of  turf  framed  in  with  buildings 
of  tasteful  architecture,  clothed  in  the  temporary  ivy  of  the 
Japanese  vine.  Around  the  players  are  gathered  a  concourse  of 
women,  for  the  most  part  in  light-colored  costumes,  with  that 
profusion  of  dainty  ornament  which  makes  their  toilette  as 
evidently  perishable  as  costly.  Their  costumes  look  as  if 
made  to  be  worn  a  single  hour,  with  nothing  to  individualize 
the  beauty  of  the  women  who  wear  them.  A  saying  recurs 
to  my  mind,  in  reference  to  this  sort  of  impersonality  of  con 
summate  elegance,  so  delicate,  so  romantic,  and  which  so 
well  explains  the  difference  between  this  sort  of  elegance  and 
another  sort.  In  one  of  those  pen  portraits  with  which  people 
amuse  themselves  as  a  parlor  game,  a  Frenchwoman  wrote, 
describing  her  own  character :  — 

"  I  never  dressed  myself  for  a  ball  without  knowing  whom 
it  was  that  I  was  going  there  to  see." 

American  women  dress  themselves  that  they  may  be  beauti 
ful,  because  they  are  "fine,  healthy  women,"  like  others  of 
their  race,  and  at  the  present  moment  not  one  of  them  is 
thinking  of  exciting  admiration,  so  absorbed  are  they  in  the 
game,  in  which  the  newcomers  immediately  become  as  much 
absorbed  as  the  others.  Trained  by  their  "physical  culture  " 
lessons,  they  can  judge  of  athletic  feats  wherever  they  see 
them,  with  an  almost  professional  intelligence,  just  as  in  a  pas 
sage  of  arms  a  fencer  measures  with  a  single  glance  the  quick 
ness  of  the  champions  and  their  recovery.  At  one  time  one 
of  the  young  men,  who  had  just  served  a  ball,  held  up  his 
foot  for  an  attendant  to  clean  the  mud  from  the  rubber  sole 
of  his  shoe.  His  attitude  during  this  very  commonplace 
action  was  so  graceful  that  I  heard  a  young  girl  exclaim :  — 

"Oh,  I  hope  he  will  win!     He  is  so  nice  looking!  " 

The  artless  expression  betrayed  the  American  woman's  pro- 


SOCIETY  61 

found  admiration  of  "looks,"  —  physical  beauty  considered 
after  a  pagan  sort  of  way.  This  admiration  is  carried  to  such 
a  point  that  one  of  the  most  celebrated  gymnasts  of  the 
United  States  invited  a  number  of  women  of  the  best  society 
to  his  private  room,  after  one  of  his  exhibitions,  and  gave 
them  a  lecture  on  muscular  action,  illustrating  by  his  own 
person.  The  photograph  of  this  torso,  with  muscles  indeed 
like  that  of  the  Vatican  over  which  the  aged  Michael  Angelo 
passed  his  hands,  is  sold  in  all  the  shops,  and  more  than  one 
of  these  women  who  are  now  looking  on  at  the  tennis  tourna 
ment  has  it  in  her  own  sitting-room. 

"Some  people  think  it  is  terribly  indecent,"  said  one  of 
them,  showing  me  this  singular  witness  to  the  independence 
of  her  ideas.  "I  don't.  It  is  just  something  Greek;  that's 
all." 

Half-past  tivelve.  — Tennis  is  over  for  to-day.  The  beauti 
ful  horsewoman  of  this  morning,  who  has  taken  her  rest  by 
looking  on  at  this  game  of  strength  and  skill,  breathing  in  the 
air  like  a  great  plant,  has  left  the  Casino  for  a  yacht,  where 
she  will  take  luncheon.  I  see  her  get  into  her  carriage,  a 
very  high  due,  take  up  the  reins,  and  go  off  at  the  full 
speed  of  her  horse,  guiding  him  with  her  supple  and  firm 
little  hands,  bravely,  deftly,  in  her  elegant  costume  and  her 
jewels.  She  is  a  "whip,"  as  they  say  here,  one  of  the  five  or 
six  women  who  can  best  drive  a  coach,  and  to  whom  four 
horses  offer  no  more  terrors  than  this  single  chestnut. 

Half  an  hour  later  I  find  her  in  the  electric  launch  which 
plies  between  her  yacht  and  the  wharf.  The  machinery  of  this 
frail  bark  has  been  improved  after  the  invention  of  another 
yachtsman,  the  owner  of  one  of  the  pleasure  boats  which  I  see 

anchored  in  the  harbor.  Th was  speaking  to  me  of  the 

ignorance  in  which  some  of  the  children  of  the  rich  are  brought 
up.  If  they  have  good  minds,  they  gain  by  it  the  ability  to 
retain  the  truly  American  gift  of  direct  vision ;  they  see  things 


62  OUTRE-MER 

and  not  the  ideas  of  things.  Furthermore,  their  ever-active  life 
develops  in  them  the  virtue  of  an  immediate  relation  with  reality. 
The  number  of  yachts  in  this  roadstead  is  a  sufficient  demon 
stration  of  the  degree  to  which  the  love  of  a  life  of  activity  and 
movement  is  a  national  characteristic.  They  form  a  little  fleet, 
some  of  them  almost  as  large  as  a  transatlantic  steamer,  and 
capable  of  a  cruise  around  the  world,  though  that  included 
the  enormous  ground  swells  of  the  Pacific  and  the  heavy  seas 
of  Cape  Horn.  Others  are  small  toys  of  ships  equal  to  a 
voyage  from  Bar  Harbor  to  New  York  if  they  keep  close  in 
shore,  doubling  all  the  capes  and  entering  all  the  creeks.  And 
then  there  are  sail-boats,  decked  cutters  which  remind  me  of 
the  Bel- Ami,  poor  Maupassant's  floating  work-room. 

The  one  which  we  board  is  of  medium  dimensions,  but  fitted 
up  with  a  magnificence  which  again  gives  me  the  impression  of 
the  want  of  restraint  of  this  strange  country.  The  sleeping- room, 
with  its  hangings  of  old  rose  damask  and  its  furniture  of  white 
enamel ;  the  drawing-room,  also  in  light  colors  decorated  with 
plants  and  flowers,  with  its  book-shelves,  its  piano,  its  deep  arm 
chairs,  its  ancient  rugs,  its  water-colors  by  well-known  artists ; 
the  dining-room  in  its  dark  mahogany,  with  the  table  laid,  on 
which  the  soft  brilliancy  of  orchids  mingles  with  the  harsher 
brilliancy  of  crystal  and  silver ;  the  glazed  upper  saloon  with  its 
embroidered  cushions  on  the  wide  sofas,  where  negroes  are 
stationed  banjo  in  hand ;  finally  the  deck  with  its  rocking-chairs 
set  among  palms,  and  an  aviary  of  exotic  birds  with  flashing 
wings,  —  all  this  represents  an  extreme  attainment  in  luxury 
which  touches  upon  the  realm  of  fancy. 

Imagination  looks  backward  twenty  five  —  fifty  years.  It 
sees  a  pioneer  plodding  over  the  Western  plains,  a  poor  Irish 
man  landing  in  New  York  from  an  emigrant  ship,  a  German 
seated  at  the  desk  of  some  hotel  office.  These  were  the 
fathers  or  grandfathers,  or  at  most  the  great-grandfathers,  of 
the  company  gathered  here,  already  so  accustomed  to  these 


SOCIETY  63 

refined  splendors  that  they  are  as  much  at  their  ease  as  princes 
of  the  blood.  It  takes  generations  to  make  a  real  nobleman, 
one  who  feels  and  acts  as  such.  But  a  single  generation 
suffices  to  make  a  man  of  high  life  who  shall  have  all  the  easy 
assurance  in  the  midst  of  elegance  of  one  of  the  innumerable 
indolent  lords  who  swarm  in  the  clubs  of  London  and  Paris. 
Even  half  a  generation  is  often  enough. 

Half-past  four.  —  Lunch,  where  again  the  inevitable  dry 
champagne  has  flowed  without  stint,  has  given  place  to  con 
versation  upon  the  deck.  Other  women  have  come,  two  girls 
alone,  two  others  accompanied  by  two  Yale  students  not  even 
related  to  them,  four  or  five  bachelors,  veritable  citizens  of 
Cosmopolis,  spending  their  incomes  between  Paris,  London, 
Cannes,  and  this  corner  of  the  world,  whenever  the  care  of  their 
property  recalls  them  to  the  United  States.  Already  the  elec 
tric  launch  is  beginning  to  carry  passengers  back  to  the  shore. 
The  whole  "  party  "  gathered  on  the  boat  is  about  to  disperse. 
Most  of  them,  and  among  them  is  the  young  woman  whose  day 
I  am  describing,  are  going  to  look  on  at  a  polo  match.  I  am 
going  with  her.  A  quarter-hour  upon  the  always-troubled 
waters  of  the  harbor,  twenty  minutes  in  a  carriage,  and  we  are 
at  the  boarded  enclosure  in  which  this  admirable  and  redoubt 
able  game  is  to  be  played.  A  side  hill  commands  it,  and  a 
dense  mass  of  people  are  gathered  there  with  intent  to  see  the 
match  from  the  outside.  This  game  is  so  national,  its  energy 
and  danger  are  so  well  suited  to  the  race,  that  humble  working- 
women,  washerwomen  for  example,  begin  their  day  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  that  they  may  the  sooner  be  through 
with  their  work  and  spend  their  afternoon  here. 

"They  are  right,"  said  the  American  who  told  me  this  fact. 
"  It  is  a  magnificent  game.  .  .  .  Twenty  years  ago  our  young 
men  thought  of  nothing  but  drinking.  Now  that  they  have  cul 
tivated  a  taste  for  sports,  especially  this  one,  they  are  obliged  to 


64  OUTRE-MER 

be  temperate  so  as  not  to  grow  stout.  They  eat  little ;  they  do 
not  drink ;  they  go  to  bed  early.  Without  this  regimen  they 
could  not  keep  it  up  a  week  at  a  time." 

The  fact  is  that,  once  having  set  foot  upon  this  green  lawn 
and  seen  the  two  bands  of  players  riding  their  horses  at  full 
speed,  their  bodies  bent  forward,  their  long  wooden  mallet  bal 
anced  in  the  free  hand,  it  is  difficult  to  associate  with  drunk 
enness  or  dissipation  the  enthusiasm  such  a  virile  exercise  nec 
essarily  takes  for  granted.  There  are  eight  of  them  galloping 
along  on  fleet  and  nimble  ponies.  With  their  yellow  boots, 
their  knickerbockers,  and  their  shirts  and  caps  of  the  colors  of 
their  side,  they  follow  in  compact  mass  the  white  ball  which 
rolls  over  the  green  turf.  The  horses,  lathered  with  foam,  follow 
it  of  their  own  accord,  with  the  fine  intelligence  of  an  animal 
bestridden  by  a  horseman  so  well  trained  that  he  seems  like  a 
part  of  his  horse. 

The  ball  leaps  forward  under  a  blow  of  the  mallet  more 
accurate  than  the  others,  and  the  two  bands  are  off  on  a  gallop. 
They  defile  close  in  front  of  the  line  of  carriages  drawn  up 
along  the  boundary.  You  hear  the  horseshoes  pound  along  the 
trampled  turf.  The  sound  is  at  once  muffled  and  clear,  and  ac 
companied  by  the  louder  sound  of  their  breathing.  The  same 
little  shudder  thrills  through  the  lookers-on  that  they  feel  in  Seville 
when  watching  the  duel  of  the  cuadrilla  and  the  bull.  Perhaps 
there  is  more  real  danger  here,  although  the  setting  seems  less 
ferocious.  I  was  on  the  field  only  an  hour,  and  in  that  time  one 
of  the  riders  had  fallen  from  his  horse.  Another  took  his  place, 
and  ten  minutes  later  received  a  blow  of  the  mallet  full  in  the 
face.  I  saw  him  fall  from  his  horse  blinded  with  blood.  He 
fainted,  then  revived,  and  left  the  field  supported  by  two  friends, 
without  attracting  much  attention  from  any  one.  The  chief 
regret  was  the  interruption  of  the  game. 

The  necessity  of  dressing  for  the  evening  offered  some  conso 
lation.  For  this  long  day  of  comings  and  goings  will  close,  like 


SOCIETY  65 

all  the  others,  by  a  dinner  party  followed  by  a  ball  at  the  Casino 
or  elsewhere  :  unless  the  open  air  and  so  much  exercise  have  got 
the  better  of  the  fashionable  woman.  The  fatigues  of  the  day 
explain  why  evening  receptions  are  so  rare  in  Newport,  with  the 
exception  of  these  balls.  Dinner  parties  break  up  at  half-past 
ten  or  even  earlier,  the  departing  guests  sometimes  leaving  their 
hosts  so  weary  that  they  would  feel  some  hesitation  at  remain 
ing  a  quarter  hour  later. 

"It  has  often  happened,"  said  Miss  L ,  the  most  beau 
tiful  "  lioness  "  of  this  season,  "  that  having  ordered  my  carriage  a 
little  late  I  have  remained  in  the  dressing-room  and  gone  to  sleep 
upon  a  bench,  so  tired  was  I,  rather  than  return  to  the  drawing- 
room,  knowing  as  I  did  that  my  poor  hosts  were  tired  too." 

How  do  they  converse  ?  This  is  the  last  question  and  the  most 
important  which  can  be  asked  with  regard  to  the  men  and 
women  who  constitute  society.  All  the  rest  is  only  trappings 
and  gesticulation :  the  art  of  conversation  is  society  itself. 
When  good,  it  is  its  best  reason  for  being  ;  when  bad,  silly,  and 
empty,  it  is  its  greatest  weariness,  and  always,  good  or  bad,  its 
chief  characteristic.  But  how  describe  the  peculiar  character 
of  a  conversation  without  setting  down  a  whole  series  of  real 
dialogues,  which  would  be  at  once  incoherent  and  in  bad  taste  ? 
We  must  seek  for  its  true  tone  in  the  romances  of  those  writers 
who  have  known  and  loved  society,  and  from  this  point  of  view 
Mr.  Henry  James's  earlier  novels  appear  to  me  to  be  the  most 
trustworthy  witnesses.  I  say  his  earlier  ones,  because  this  very 
acute  observer  has  of  late  more  particularly  studied  his  com 
patriots  as  they  appear  in  foreign  lands.  Those  on  this  side  of 
the  water  find  fault  with  him  for  this,  and  I  recently  read  in  a 
newspaper  this  astounding  epigram,  the  metaphor  being  bor 
rowed  from  the  electric  railway  :  — 

"  He  has  so  much  talent  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  his  trolley 
does  not  run  on  an  American  wire  ! " 
F 


66  OUTRE-MER 

None  the  less  is  it  true  that  no  one  else  has  so  accurately 
reproduced  the  distinguishing  characteristics  of  conversation 
as  heard  in  a  drawing-room  or  at  a  dinner  table  in  Boston  or 
New  York. 

As  to  the  more  strictly  contemporary  talk,  that  color  of  the 
present  and  the  actual  which  Gyp  so  happily  renders  for  us,  it 
seems  to  me  that  no  one  has  given  a  better  idea  of  it  than  the 
distinguished  woman  who  has  made  the  pseudonym  Julien 
Gordon  famous.  I  refer  to  her  novels  the  European  reader, 
who,  without  crossing  the  ocean  or  leaving  his  easy-chair,  may 
be  curious  to  verify  the  few  features  which  to  my  mind  most 
distinctly  mark  American  conversation.  For  Americans  love 
to  talk  much  more  than  the  English,  if  not  so  much  as  the 
Gallo-Romans ;  especially  is  this  true  of  those  in  whose  veins 
flow  a  few  drops  of  that  excitable  Irish  blood,  which  is  no  more 
able  to  be  silent  than  to  forget. 

The  first  of  these  features  is  somewhat  hard  to  reduce  to  a 
formula.  I  venture  one  nevertheless,  helping  it  out  by  com 
ment.  I  call  it  point  of  view. 

You  converse  with  a  Frenchman;  if  he  is  bright  and  ani 
mated,  after  ten  sentences  the  subject  will  have  changed. 
He  lets  himself  be  carried  along  by  the  association  of  ideas 
so  that  in  the  course  of  an  hour  you  will  have  touched  on  all 
subjects,  without  method,  without  profit,  but  with  pleasure. 
He  leaves  you  with  the  impression  of  an  alert  and  ready 
mind  which,  to  use  correctly  an  old  word  that  is  very 
French,  is  illumined  on  many  things.  You  have  not  felt  that 
which  nine  times  out  of  ten  you  will  feel  with  an  American 
man  or  woman,  —  an  energy  which  never  relapses  even  in  the 
trivialities  of  social  intercourse,  a  mind  which  has  its  own 
standpoint  from  which  to  look  upon  life,  and  which  holds 
to  it,  compels  you  to  accept  it,  utilizes  you. 

This    is  because,    under   the   outward   semblance   of    the 


SOCIETY  67 

woman  of  the  world  who  is  talking  with  you  in  a  drawing- 
room  amid  lights  and  flowers,  there  is  a  resolute  creature 
who,  from  the  time  she  came  out,  began  to  mould  her  own 
personality  after  some  chosen  model.  Such  a  one  has  re 
solved  to  be  a  great  lady  after  the  English  type.  She  has 
lived  much  in  London,  and  has  had  the  wit  to  fit  herself  to 
her  surroundings.  You  find  it  impossible  to  draw  her  away 
from  this  position,  or  to  elicit  from  her  any  "references" 
that  are  not  British  and  of  London.  A  second  is  pleased 
to  be  a  Parisian,  and  her  conversation  shuts  you  up  in  a 
round  of  ideas  which  forever  and  ever  presuppose  Paris. 
For  her  there  is  nothing  but  our  books,  our  pictures,  our 
plays,  our  actors.  A  third  has  taken  it  into  her  head  to  be 
an  actress.  She  has  taken  lessons  in  elocution  and  speaks 
well.  Her  conversation  turns  wholly  upon  the  theatre.  A 
fourth  is  by  way  of  being  literary.  Within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  you  discover  that  in  the  midst  of  the  whirlwind  of 
society  she  had  found  time  for  a  wide  reading,  and  she  keeps 
it  up  by  talking  to  you  with  that  singularly  vigorous  pre 
cision  and  particularity  with  which  people  here  are  endowed. 
One  of  my  French  friends  who  was  sought  for  as  the  husband 
of  a  very  rich  girl,  renounced  the  half-formed  engagement 
because  the  girl,  being  extremely  interested  in  science,  spent 
a  whole  evening  in  explaining  to  him  a  newly  invented  loco 
motive.  "I  can't  marry  an  engineer,"  was  his  only  reply 
to  the  reproaches  of  the  person  who  had  introduced  him 
to  her. 

In  general,  it  must  be  admitted,  the  point  of  view  is  less 
severe,  less  uncompromising,  and  you  will  find  in  the  conver 
sation  of  Americans,  especially  of  the  women,  a  second  char 
acteristic  which  saves  them  from  stiffness  and  pedantry. 
This  is  vivacity.  In  their  lightest  words  there  is  a  distinct 
flavor  of  reality;  there  is  also  animation,  action.  Nothing 
abstract  or  vague ;  the  words  always  make  pictures,  the  terms 


68  OUTRE-MER 

always  reveal  experience.  They  have  not  in  the  slightest 
degree  that  motive  of  personal  effacement  which  gives  to 
manners  their  highest  polish,  but  which  robs  conversation  of 
so  much  individuality.  They  never  hesitate  to  speak  of  them 
selves,  to  tell  of  their  journeys,  their  adventures,  of  what 
they  call  their  "experiences."  With  little  feeling  for  the 
spirit  of  words,  they  easily  come  thus  to  have  what  we  may 
call  the  spirit  of  things,  a  picturesque  speech  which,  when 
mingled  with  gaiety,  produces  an  original  and  novel  "humor." 
Here  again,  under  the  rich  woman  or  the  stately  man,  you 
feel  "the  people  "  close  at  hand. 

You  feel  it  also  in  a  certain  general  artlessness  of  conver 
sation.  Broad  innuendo  is  absolutely  absent  from  it,  and 
scandal  is  seldom  cruel.  The  imitation  of  aristocratic  imper 
tinence,  that  scourge  of  underbred  society,  finds  no  place 
here.  Ridicule  is  incessant,  but  it  is  a  ridicule  that  never 
wounds.  It  is  carried  on  chiefly  by  lively  anecdotes.  Per 
sonal  characteristics  are  its  principal  object;  after  that  social 
blunders,  lack  of  taste  in  "lion-hunting,"  that  is,  the  pursuit 
of  celebrated  or  titled  people.  Anecdotes  of  this  class  gener 
ally  come  from  Europe,  and  go  to  prove  that  the  usual  result 
of  the  passage  from  the  New  to  the  Old  World  is  not  to  cor 
rect  the  faults  of  the  American,  but  to  make  them  more  pro 
nounced.  At  home,  in  his  natural  surroundings,  he  is  more 
simple,  more  cordial.  In  short,  hearing  him  talk  you  esteem 
him,  you  feel  him  to  be  "good-natured,"  to  use  his  own  ex 
pression,  without  many  dislikes  or  many  desires,  and  easily 
amused.  Forain  said  to  me  after  a  few  days  in  Newport, 
"They  are  children."  This  sort  of  spirit  seemed  flavorless  to 
that  keen  observer,  who  has  entered  so  deeply  into  the  old 
age  of  our  decadence.  It  has  a  flavor,  but  so  different  from 
the  Parisian  acridity  that  it  is  perhaps  impossible  to  taste 
them  both. 

However,  the  Americans  are  doing  their  best  in  this  line. 


SOCIETY  69 

They  enjoy  repeating  this  most  admirable  of  Forain's  stories, 
though  with  the  same  effort  of  understanding  which  they 
apply  to  the  reading  of  Verlaine  and  Mallarme".  For 
another  note  of  their  conversation  is  a  frequent  reference 
to  French  writers  of  the  extreme  Left.  This  taste  has  reached 
even  the  women  by  the  medium  of  the  painters  who  have 
gone  to  Paris  to  study  and  have  been  pleased  to  enter  into 
the  current,  make  acquaintance  with  things.  One  of  the 
unintended  pleasures  of  conversation  with  these  women  is  the 
amazing  contrast  between  certain  names  and  the  lips  that 
utter  them,  and  that  go  on  to  apply  to  them  with  surprising 
frankness  the  same  words,  "lovely,"  "enchanting,"  "fascinat 
ing,"  that  equally  describe  all  paintings  and  -all  natural  land 
scapes,  a  horse  and  a  musical  phrase,  a  bonnet  and  a  statue. 

Two  classes  of  subjects  appear  to  me  to  be  entirely  excluded 
from  conversation ;  one  is  politics,  the  other  religion.  This 
silence  is  the  more  significant  when  we  reflect  that  these 
are  the  two  unfailing  interests  of  America,  and  that  in  no 
country  do  political  and  religious  life  appear  to  be  more 
intense.  This  phenomenon  may  be  attributed  to  various 
causes.  For  my  part,  I  see  in  it  a  proof  that  Americans  pos 
sess  in  a  very  high  degree  that  distributive  faculty  which  in 
itself  is  only  a  particular  manifestation  of  their  strength  of 
will.  You  never  hear  a  business  man  speak  of  business  outside 
of  his  office.  They  excel  in  fixing  the  stopping-point.  The 
same  energy  which  permits  them,  having  embarked  in  an  un 
dertaking,  to  give  themselves  entirely  to  it,  permits  them,  the 
matter  being  finished,  to  give  themselves  with  equal  thorough 
ness  to  a  new  one.  They  make  a  certain  use  of  the  verb  "  to 
have  "  which  shows  this.  They  say  that  they  have  a  drive  or 
a  ride,  as  they  would  say  that  they  have  a  bottle  of  wine 
to  drink,  a  book  to  read.  It  is  as  if,  a  portion  of  the  day 
being  theirs,  an  hour,  two,  three  hours,  their  first  concern  is 


70  OUTRE-MER 

to  use  it  —  to  make  the  most   of  it,  to   make   it   an   almost 
isolated  whole. 

They  no  more  mingle  their  sentiments  than  their  occupa 
tions.  These  are  pigeonholes  which  they  open  and  close  at 
will.  Politics  is  one  of  these  pigeonholes,  religion  is  another, 
society  is  a  third ;  and  then,  politics  here  are  not,  as  with  us, 
left  a  prey  to  the  hazard  of  popular  fancy  or  passion.  They 
are  ordered  like  any  other  business,  and  the  parties  are  gov 
erned  by  the  "  machine  "  in  a  way  which  permits  no  chimeras 
either  of  general  ideas  or  of  petty  intrigues.  As  to  religion, 
absolute  freedom  has  so  multiplied  sects,  and  shades  of  dif 
ference  in  the  sects,  that  all  discussion  has  come  to  be 
impossible.  It  would  be  a  clashing  of  opinions  so  vast  and 
continuous  that  as  a  natural  consequence  they  have  agreed  to 
a  mutual  tolerance.  This  absence  of  the  two  great  principles 
of  irritation  which  exist  in  this  world  has  resulted  in  giving 
conversation  an  air  of  harmlessness,  almost  of  benignity,  as  of 
a  most  cordial  simplicity.  So,  at  least,  it  impresses  me,  for 
all  these  travelling  impressions  ought  to  carry  with  them  the 
corrective  of  a  "  perhaps,"  since  they  can  never  be  entirely 
verified  even  after  a  second,  a  third,  or  even  a  tenth  experience. 


IV 

SOCIETY 

II.    Women  and  Young  Girls 

I  HAVE  a  quantity  of  notes  made  in  the  course  of  months 
after  those  first  ones,  upon  that  American  "society,"  of  which 
at  Newport  I  had  at  once  the  most  complete  and  most  striking 
experience.  I  have  seen  it  again  under  all  aspects,  at  Boston, 
at  Chicago,  at  New  York  again,  and  at  Washington. 

These  notes  were  hastily  set  down  day  by  day,  like  a  paint 
er's  sketches,  destined  one  day  to  be  blended  in  some  special 
final  picture.  I  have  run  them  over  more  than  once,  with  the 
idea  of  classifying  them,  of  summing  them  up  in  a  few  some 
what  clear  statements.  The  difficulty  which  I  have  found  in 
making  such  a  synthesis  arises  less  from  their  abundance  than 
from  a  process  of  metamorphosis  which  my  own  mind  has 
undergone  in  the  course  of  this  long  journey  and  these  many 
experiences. 

Just  as  the  words  "the  United  States"  now  translate  them 
selves  for  me  by  thousands  of  concrete  and  distinct  pictures, 
while  at  my  arrival  they  brought  up  before  me  a  confused  and 
indeterminate  mass,  so  these  other  words,  "  American  Society," 
have  ceased  to  express  for  me  the  unique  thing  of  which  I  had 
a  prevision  at  Newport. 

There  is  no  American  society  as  there  is  a  French  society 
and  an  English  society.  In  the  United  States  there  are  as 
many  social  systems  as  there  are  cities,  and  as  not  one  of  these 
cities  has  succeeded  in  establishing  a  supremacy  of  fashion  like 

7* 


72  OUTRE-MER 

that  which  Paris  exercises  over  our  provinces,  it  results  that 
there  are  all  sorts  of  social  centres,  each  one  of  which  deserves 
a  monograph.  Certain  novelists  are  working  in  this  field; 
among  them  I  may  cite  Mr.  Chatfield  Taylor,  to  whom  we 
already  owe  such  curious  sketches  of  fashionable  Chicago  ;  and 
common  speech  itself  furnishes  proof  of  these  differences  in 
social  circles,  with  the  extravagances  peculiar  to  proverbial 
expressions.  How  many  times  in  the  course  of  this  journey 
have  people  said  to  me  :  — 

"  In  Eoston  they  ask  you  what  you  know ;  in  New  York, 
how  much  you  are  worth ;  in  Philadelphia,  who  your  parents 
were  !  " 

This  epigrammatic  remark  is  not  entirely  accurate.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  in  New  York,  for  example,  painters, 
sculptors,  writers,  and  theatrical  artists  were  assured  of  as 
cordial  a  welcome  as  in  the  ancient  and  learned  citadel  of 
Puritanism,  —  the  "  Hub  "  of  Massachusetts.  It  remains  none 
the  less  evident  that  the  ardor  for  culture  is  more  general  and 
more  intense  in  Boston,  the  mania  for  luxury  more  violent  in 
New  York,  and  that  in  Chicago  there  is  more  imitation,  more 
uncertainty  in  the  endeavor  after  the  fitting.  In  that  city  I 
saw  ladies  rise  from  their  seats  in  the  theatre  at  the  suggestion 
of  one  of  their  escorts,  to  visit  an  actor  in  the  green  room. 
But  when  a  lady  from  New  England  who  was  with  them  in 
their  box  refused  to  join  them  in  their  incursion  behind  the 
scenes,  they  sat  down  again,  their  eyes  betraying  the  thought, 
"  So  it  is  not  proper  !  " 

They  long  after  Washington.  "  It  is  a  delightful  place,"  a 
lady  said  to  me.  "  The  men  are  not  busy  as  they  are  here. 
They  are  in  politics  or  something.  They  have  plenty  of  time 
for  afternoon  teas  !  " 

This  abundance  of  time  for  five-o'clock  teas  does,  in  fact, 
give  to  the  city  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac  something  of  the 
effect  of  Dresden  or  Weimar.  Walking  along  these  streets,  with 


SOCIETY  73 

their  border  of  private  houses,  with  no  suggestion  of  business 
or  commerce,  you  might  fancy  yourself  in  some  strasse  of  a 
German  capital.  And  the  easy  flexibility  of  social  life  is  in 
singular  contrast  with  the  overweighted  condition  of  the  other 
cities.  I  fancy  that  'Frisco  —  as  the  contemptuous  East  insists 
upon  calling  San  Francisco  —  has  also  its  very  distinct,  very 
special,  very  original  social  circle ;  and  St.  Louis  also,  and 
especially  New  Orleans. 

It  results  that  the  traveller  has,  after  a  little  while,  some  diffi 
culty  in  recovering  the  first  impression  of  unity,  which  is  yet 
the  true  one  ;  for  these  different  "  societies  "  are  merely  varie 
ties  of  a  single  species,  or  as  groups  within  a  group.  They 
have,  at  any  rate,  one  trait  in  common,  with  regard  to  which 
it  is  so  impossible  to  be  mistaken,  that  the  most  superficial 
observers  have  remarked  it  no  less  than  the  most  profound, 
the  two  weeks'  tourist  as  much  as  a  Bryce,  or  a  Claudio 
Jeannet.  All  these  forms  of  social  life,  however  different  they 
may  be,  are  entirely,  absolutely,  the  work  of  "  woman."  It  is 
by  woman  and  for  women  that  these  social  circles  exist,  so  that, 
in  order  to  understand  them  in  their  birth  and  development,  it 
is  necessary  first  of  all  to  study  and  understand  the  American 
woman.  Such  a  task  is  difficult  in  any  country :  how  much 
more  when  it  has  to  do  with  creatures  at  once  so  complete  and 
so  complex,  each  one  of  whom  has  her  own  will,  a  small  uni 
verse  of  ideas,  sentiments,  ambitions  ! 

At  all  hazards,  here  are  a  few  reflections,  a  few  sketches 
chosen  from  among  a  couple  of  hundred,  as  in  some  respects 
the  most  representative. 

A  first  problem  forces  itself  upon  you,  — a  historic  problem, 
the  solution  of  which  will,  at  least,  explain  how  this  supreme 
product  of  this  civilization  has  been  made.  How  does  it  come 
to  pass  that  the  men  of  this  country  —  so  energetic,  so  strong- 
willed,  so  dominating  —  have  permitted  their  wives  to  shake  off 


74  OUTRE-MER 

masculine  authority  more  completely  than  in  any  other  part  of 
the  world  ?  It  would  seem  as  if  these  sturdy  conquerors,  ac 
customed  to  see  everything  bend  before  their  daring  and  often 
their  severity,  would  be  more  incapable  than  others  of  tolerat 
ing  in  their  homes  a  will,  an  energy,  an  activity,  a  personality 
in  fact,  equal  to  their  own,  existing  by  itself  beside  them  and 
confronting  them. 

The  contrary  fact  appears,  inscrutable,  and,  if  social  life 
is  more  closely  observed,  every  slightest  detail  of  manners 
makes  it  equally  evident.  Not  a  hotel,  not  a  bank,  not  a 
public  building,  which  has  not  its  ladies'  entrance  by  which 
they  go  in  and  out  as  independently,  as  much  a  law  to  them 
selves,  as  men  can  be.  One  of  them  enters  those  electric  or 
cable  cars  which  abound  in  the  United  States.  The  seats  are 
all  occupied,  but  nineteen  times  in  twenty  a  man  gets  up  to 
give  his  place  to  the  newcomer,  who  accepts  it  without  thanks, 
so  entirely  natural  does  the  courtesy  appear.  If  this  rule  has 
any  exceptions,  it  is  because  certain  women  deem  it  a  reproach 
and  humiliation  to  be  treated  differently  from  men.  That  the 
young  girls  of  the  best  families  go  out  alone  on  foot,  or  in  a 
carriage,  is  a  social  custom  so  well  known  that  one  would  be 
ashamed  to  cite  it,  except  for  the  sake  of  interpreting  its  mean 
ing  more  accurately.  This  proof  of  their  freedom  of  action  is 
also  a  proof  of  the  respect  which  men  in  America  profess  for 
them.  A  man  who  should  too  boldly  stare  at  a  woman  who  was 
alone  would  be  so  discredited  that  the  most  ill-bred  person 
would  not  venture  to  do  so.  What  do  I  say  ? !  \  He  would  not 
so  much  as  think  of  it,  so  fixed  is  the  habit  of  equality  between 
the  two  sexes.  \  \ 

This  equality  extends  from  small  things  to  great.  You  visit 
a  public  school ;  you  will  there  see  girls  working  with  boys,  and 
the  teacher  a  man  or  a  woman  as  it  happens.  You  enter  a 
laboratory  of  the  university.  There  are  young  girls  bending 
over  the  microscope  side  by  side  with  the  students. 


SOCIETY  75 

permit  the  entrance  of  a  reporter,  who  comes  unannounced 
in  the  name  of  a  great  newspaper ;  it  is  a  woman  who  asks  to 
interview  you.  You  ask  the  address  of  a  doctor ;  you  ascertain 
that  there  are  as  many  women  doctors  as  men,  or  if  not  as 
many,  that  they  are  so  many  as  to  cease  to  be  exceptional. 
You  go  into  the  courts  of  law ;  the  secretary  who  draws  up  the 
warrants  is  a  woman.  There  are  women  lawyers.  There  are 
women  pastors  in  certain  churches.  At  the  head  of  a  volume 
containing  the  census  of  the  occupations  of  women  in  the 
United  States,  one  of  them,  a  poet  of  high  standing,  Julia  Ward 
Howe,  has  placed  this  proud  sentence.  It  explains  better  than 
whole  commentaries  that  passion  for  activity  which  character 
izes  the  claims  of  women  in  this  country. 

"  The  theory  that  woman  ought  not  to  work  is  a  corruption 
of  the  old  aristocratic  system.  ...  A  respect  for  labor  is  the 
foundation  of  a  true  democracy." 

Who  can  be  surprised  if  creatures  possessing  this  pride, 
this  consciousness  of  individuality,  having  conquered  the 
right  of  taking  upon  themselves  occupations  most  foreign  to 
their  sex,  reign  uncontested  in  the  realm  most  fit  for  them,  — 
the  management  of  social  life?  The  very  origin  of  the  social 
life  of  America,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  makes  this 
necessary.  In  this  country  the  women  who  belong  to  society 
have  not,  as  with  us,  and  in  England,  received  a  different 
education  from  those  who  are  not  of  it.  Their  birth  is  not 
different;  their  family  is  not  different;  nor  is  their  nature. 
They  bring  to  it  the  same  strength  of  resolution,  the  same 
power  of  realism,  the  same  independence  of  personality.  It 
remains  to  inquire  why  men  permitted  this  independence  to 
be  born  and  to  grow  up. 

This  phenomenon  has  complex  reasons,  as  excellent  ob 
servers  have  pointed  out.  And  first,  it  is  precisely  that  fever 
of  democracy,  that  idolatry  of  the  doctrine  of  equality,  which 
for  a  hundred  years  was  one  of  the  passions  and  the  prides 


76  OUTRE-MER 

of  the  American.  To  this  day,  though  in  certain  Eastern 
cities  an  invasion  of  old  European  prejudices  has  introduced 
a  few  pretensions  which  that  Jacobin  Stendhal  energetically 
called  the  "aristocratic  virus,"  this  idolatry  of  equality  re 
mains  very  much  alive  in  the  middle  class.  I  have  seen  a 
theatre  audience  spring  up  frantically  at  this  word  of  a  labor 
ing  man  as  he  entered  a  liquor  saloon :  — 

"  I  am  a  freeborn  American  citizen,  and  I  will  go  where 
I  please." 

Such  theories  have  their  logic.  The  equality  of  the  man 
and  the  woman  was  on  similar  terms.  The  religious  sects  have 
contributed  to  this  end,  by  giving  to  woman  the  possibility 
of  preaching  like  a  man,  and  consequently  of  considering 
herself,  and  making  herself  to  be  considered,  his  equal  in 
reason,  eloquence,  and  authority.  There  are  women  in  the 
origin  of  many  of  the  religious  confessions.  Ann  Lee  founded 
the  Shakers.  Barbara  Heck  reformed  the  Methodists.  Lu- 
cretia  Mott  gave  their  faith  to  the  Hicksites, —  to  the 
"Friends," — who,  like  Tolstoi,  preach  "obedience  to  the 
light  within."  You  will  continually  find  in  the  newspapers 
notices  like  the  following,  which  I  copy  from  an  Albany 
journal:  — 

"The  Rev.  Anna  H.  S —  -  will  address  the  men's  mass 
meeting  at  German  Hall,  at  four  o'clock:  no  boys  under  six 
teen  admitted." 

Thus  granted  entrance  to  offices,  women  necessarily  held  in 
their  homes  a  place  which  the  conditions  of  the  conquest  of 
the  vast  continent  contributed  to  make  all  the  more  impor 
tant.  Women  were  few  in  those  frontier  settlements  which, 
advancing  continually  westward,  marked  the  stages  of  the 
great  democracy,  in  its  progress  from  Atlantic  to  Pacific. 
They  were  most  necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  this  half- 
savage  life,  in  which  men  were  called  to  struggle  at  once 
against  nature  and  against  men.  Treated  without  sufficient 


SOCIETY  77 

consideration,  the  women  could  not  have  lived  through  it. 
They  would  have  died,  as  Lincoln's  mother  did,  seized  with 
that  mysterious  prairie  malady,  that  "milk  sickness,"  which 
never  yields  its  hold.  It  was  necessary  to  be  careful  and  con 
siderate  of  them. 

A  singular  sort  of  chivalry  is  thus  developed,  the  signs 
of  which  are  found  in  the  local  character  studies  which  the 
Americans  are  so  fond  of  writing,  setting  on  the  stage,  and 
playing.  One  type  continually  recurs  in  these  pieces,  that  of 
the  Westerner,  rough  and  loyal,  who  chews,  drinks,  and  talks 
a  frightful  dialect  through  his  nose,  but  who,  where  a  woman 
is  concerned,  is  capable  of  the  most  remarkable  flights  of 
honor.  I  have  nowhere  found  this  singular  hero  better  repre 
sented  than  in  Boston,  in  a  comedy  entitled  In  Mizzoura, 
and  by  an  actor  named  Goodwin.  This  cross  between  a  cow 
boy  and  Don  Quixote  saved  the  life  of  a  rival,  who  was  on  the 
point  of  being  lynched  by  a  mob.  With  his  facetious  and 
intent  features,  his  tobacco  distended  cheek,  his  far-stream 
ing  jets  of  saliva,  his  harsh  voice,  his  hat  on  the  back  of 
his  head,  and  a  sort  of  automatic  passivity  of  manner,  the 
comedian  was  the  very  incarnation  of  the  sentimental  and 
kindly  countryman;  and  I  found  an  amazing  contrast  between 
the  applause  with  which  the  public  greeted  his  generous  deeds 
and  the  ease  with  which  they  accepted  the  idea  of  lynching. 
Both  these  things  are  a  part  of  their  customs. 

By  all  sorts  of  influences  like  these  that  special  creation, 
the  American  woman,  is  elaborated.  These  are  the  roots  by 
which  the  frivolous  and  capricious  independence  of  the  mil 
lionaire's  daughter  sinks  deep  into  the  springs  of  the  national 
life.  In  the  strangely  perplexing  relations  between  American 
men  and  women  there  is  a  still  deeper  reason,  at  least  so  it 
appears  to  me,  and  one  which  is  wholly  physiological.  But 
when  we  have  to  do  with  the  laws  which  rule  the  mutual  rela 
tions  of  the  sexes,  we  always  have  to  come  back  to  physiology. 


78  OUTRE-MER 

If,  for  example,  the  Orientals  have  reduced  their  women  to 
a  frightful  state  of  slavery  and  degradation,  it  is  because  their 
love  for  them  is  strongly  sensual,  and  in  all  sensuality  there 
is  a  basis  of  hatred,  because  there  is  a  hidden  taint  of  animal 
jealousy.  If  the  Latin  races,  while  according  a  greater  liberty 
to  women,  yet  instinctively  revolt  from  the  idea  of  their  inde 
pendence  and  personal  initiative,  it  is  because,  under  all  our. 
refinements,  we  are  a  little  like  the  Oriental.  Sensuality  and 
the  despotism  of  jealousy  are  at  the  foundation.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  English  accord  more  liberty  to  their  women, 
it  is  because  climate,  race,  religion,  have  more  tamed  the 
ardor  of  their  natures.  The  sera  juvenum  Venus  of  Tacitus 
is  as  true  of  young  Oxford  men  as  it  was  of  the  young  Ger 
mans  of  the  first  century.  All  who  have  closely  studied  the 
young  men  of  America  will  say,  with  one  consent,  that  in  this 
respect  they  are  like  young  Englishmen,  or  still  more  cold. 

Merely  to  reflect  upon  the  conditions  under  which  the 
country  has  grown  up,  is  to  see  that  it  must  logically  be  thus. 
The  incessant  toil  into  which  these  men  must  have  thrown 
themselves,  in  the  effort  to  wrest  the  land  from  nature  and 
from  the  Indians,  the  nervous  tension  due  to  the  stress  of 
competition,  bad  cooking,  the  absence  of  wine  and  the  use  of 
intoxicating  liquors,  religious  fervor  and  political  ardor,  and 
a  score  of  other  causes,  have  checked  the  development  of  this 
people  on  the  side  of  the  senses.  Art  and  literature  are  recent 
things  ;  neither,  then,  has  the  emotional  imagination  been 
fed.  A  trifling  fact  is  singularly  significant.  I  am  assured 
that  in  all  the  United  States  there  is  not  an  entirely  nude 
statue.  Only  yesterday  the  Bostonians,  so  cultured,  so  lib 
eral,  so  in  love  with  art,  refused  to  accept  for  the  facade  of 
the  Public  Library  two  children  done  by  the  powerful  sculptor 
St.  Gaudens,  because  they  were  not  clothed!  The  munici 
pality  of  Chicago  forced  another  sculptor  to  put  clothes  upon  a 
Hebe  designed  for  a  fountain,  which  he  had  left  undraped. 


SOCIETY  79 

These  circumstances  combined  have  brought  about  this 
result,  that  woman's  charms  have  been  given  the  second  place 
in  the  interest  of  men.  This  sense  of  charm,  though  lulled  to 
indifference,  has  become  neither  morbid  nor  unhappy !  That 
species  of  cruelty  which  grows  out  of  too  great  desire  is 
the  true  principle  of  the  great  inequalities  of  legislation  in 
which  was  manifested  the  secret  desire  of  the  male  in  defi 
ance  of  the  female.  In  American  sensibility,  it  simply  does 
not  exist.  It  even  seems  as  if  this  relative  diminution  in  the 
prominence  given  to  the  life  of  the  senses  has  modified  — 
only  slightly  indeed,  but  none  the  less  truly  —  the  difference 
of  appearance  between  the  two  sexes. 

I  remember  that  at  Cambridge,  visiting  the  "Hasty  Pud 
ding,"  one  of  the  students'  clubs,  where  they  give  amateur 
theatricals,  I  had  an  opportunity  to  examine  the  photographs 
of  those  of  the  young  men  who  had  taken  women's  parts  and 
wore  their  dress.  There  was  a  surprising  similarity  —  almost 
identity,  indeed  —  between  these  portraits  and  those  of  their 
sisters  or  cousins,  tall  girls,  with  narrow  chests,  falling  shoul 
ders,  straight  backs,  who  have  practised  gymnastics  and  "  high- 
kicking,"  who  can  lift  their  foot  as  high  as  their  head,  and 
jump  from  their  own  height  without  injury.  It  seems  as  if 
the  type  of  manhood,  while  taking  on  a  finer  nervous  organi 
zation,  had  lost  something  of  its  primitive  weight,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  the  type  of  womanhood,  vigorous,  ener 
getic,  and  impulsive,  had  taken  on  a  more  resolute  charm, 
firmer,  less  voluptuous,  and  delicately  masculine. 

These  are  but  suggestions,  but  they  help  to  a  better  under 
standing  of  what  makes,  not  the  whole  of  a  people,  but  its 
real  and  permanent  basis,  — the  physical  existence  of  the  race. 
And  though  the  social  life  be  luxurious,  artificial,  and  over 
loaded,  such  a  race  gives  a  basis  of  reality  to  the  nation,  or, 
to  make  a  more  accurate  comparison,  it  is  the  web  upon  which 
may  be  embroidered  the  flowers  of  life. 


80  OUTRE-MER 


This  apotheosis  of  woman,  which  is  the  most  characteristic 
feature  of  "society"  in  America,  is  in  the  first  place  and  espe 
cially  the  apotheosis  of  the  young  girl.  The  words  are  simple, 
yet  they  need  to  be  explained ;  for  it  is  probable  that  on 
every  point  —  except  indeed  that  of  honor  —  they  express  pre 
cisely  the  contrary  in  the  United  States  and  France. 

That  which  first  strikes  the  foreigner,  who  has  heard  so  much 
about  American  girls,  is  the  absolute  impossibility  of  distin 
guishing  them  from  the  young  married  women.  The  much- 
commented  fact  that  they  go  in  and  out  entirely  unattended 
does  not  sufficiently  account  for  this  perplexity.  Their  identity 
is  much  deeper  than  that.  They  dress  in  the  same  way,  wear 
the  same  jewels,  have  the  same  freedom  of  speech  and  of 
smile,  they  read  the  same  books,  do  the  same  things,  possess 
the  same  full-blown  beauty,  and,  thanks  to  the  invention  of  the 
"chaperon,"  there  is  no  theatre,  or  supper  party,  or  tea 
where  they  cannot  be  present  all  by  themselves  upon  the  invita 
tion  of  any  man  of  their  acquaintance.  The  character  of  this 
official  surveillance  may  be  estimated  by  the  companion  fact 
that  the  young  girl,  in  whose  honor  the  "bachelor"  gets  up  a 
party,  usually  chooses  the  chaperon  herself.  The  younger  the 
chaperon,  the  better  she  suits.  The  young  widow  and  the 
"  grass- widow,"  whether  separated,  divorced,  or  simply  apart 
from  her  husband  for  the  time  being,  is  an  ideal  person  for  this 
duty.  It  may  also  be  said  that  the  young  girls  whom  you  see 
around  a  table  at  Delmonico's,  in  company  with  these  young 
men  and  the  said  chaperon,  are  as  much  at  liberty  as  if  they 
had  no  one  to  answer  for  them  but  themselves. 

This  habit  of  unchecked  self-government  is  manifest  in  the 
singular  serenity  of  their  countenances.  One  of  the  most 
charming  men  in  New  York,  a  poet  of  reputation,  conceived 
the  clever  idea  of  making  a  collection  of  miniatures  in 
which,  with  their  permission,  should  be  included  all  the  noted 
beauties  of  the  city.  I  remember  that  when  I  passed  a  mag- 


SOCIETY  81 

nifying-glass  over  the  glass  behind  which  smiled  a  hundred 
refined  and  inscrutable  faces,  I  sought  in  vain  to  distinguish 
those  who  were  married,  and  I  could  not.  What  more,  indeed, 
can  marriage  bring  a  girl  when  it  comes  ?  Duty ;  a  husband  to 
submit  to,  children  to  bring  up,  a  house  to  look  after.  The 
young  girl  feels  the  weight  of  none  of  these  chains  to-day. 
She  knows  it,  and  that  she  is  enjoying  her  best  days.  Once 
married  she  will  not  have  one  whit  more  freedom,  and  she 
will  have  fewer  opportunities  to  amuse  herself.  Therefore, 
more  often  than  not,  she  will  marry  late.  If  it  is  not  entirely 
the  end  of  things  for  her,  as  for  the  young  man  in  Paris  who 
decides  to  give  up  his  bachelor  life,  it  is  the  entering-wedge  of 
abdication.  And  many  of  them  do  not  shut  their  eyes  to  this 
fact. 

"  We  must  amuse  ourselves  before  marriage,"  one  of  them 
said  to  me,  with  a  smile.  "Who  knows  what  will  come  after 
ward?" 

The  divorce  cases  reported  from  time  to  time  in  the  news 
papers  prove  this  young  woman's  good  sense  to  be  equal  to  her 
beauty.  For  my  part,  after  having  closely  studied  human  con 
ditions  in  Europe  and  here,  I  think  that  a  young  man  from 
twenty  to  twenty-five  has  the  best  chance  of  happiness  by  being 
an  Englishman  of  good  family,  studying  at  Oxford  ;  and  a  young 
girl  by  being  born  an  American,  of  a  father  who  has  made  a 
fortune  in  mines,  railroads,  or  land  speculations,  entering  New 
York  or  Washington  society  under  good  auspices. 

At  the  first  glance  this  absolute  freedom  makes  all  the  young 
girls  look  alike.  They  are  the  model  after  whom  many  authors 
—  some  of  them  very  distinguished,  but  none  of.  whom  has 
taken  the  trouble  to  come  here  —  have  composed  the  type 
which  has  become  classical  with  us,  —  the  American  woman  of 
the  romance  and  the  theatre.  Our  writers  manufacture  her  of 
the  simplest  possible  materials,  —  very  bad  manners  upon  a 
background  of  simplicity;  there  you  have  the  walking  doll. 


82  OUTRE-MER 

Nevertheless,  it  is  only  a  doll,  and  the  two  elements  of  which 
it  was  made  appear  to  me  to  be  equally  false. 

The  American  girl,  when  we  see  her  in  France,  may  often 
appear  to  us  ill-bred,  because  we  compare  her  with  our  own 
conventional  type  of  young  girl,  which,  let  me  whisper,  is  not 
very  close  to  the  truth  either.  Seen  near  at  hand  and  in  her 
own  home,  you  are  better  able  to  understand  that  this  freedom  of 
action  may  quite  as  probably  be  associated  with  a  good,  as  with  a 
bad,  education.  After  a  very  few  weeks,  you  learn  to  distinguish 
quite  clearly  between  those  who  are  "  fast,"  as  they  say,  and 
those  who  are  not ;  between  her  who  takes  pleasure  in  arousing 
the  interest  and  awakening  the  desire  of  a  man  and  her  with 
whom  moral  familiarity  is  impossible,  still  less  physical  familiarity. 

As  for  simplicity,  when  we  Frenchmen  apply  the  word  to 
young  girls  we  always  take  it  for  granted  that  there  is  only  one 
question  in  the  world  for  them,  —  that  of  love.  We  implicitly 
admit  that  that  is  the  essential  fact  of  their  existence,  as  of  all 
women's  existence.  We  ask  ourselves,  what  they  think  about  it, 
what  they  know  about  it,  and  our  measure  of  their  innocence,  of 
their  virginity  of  soul,  if  I  may  so  speak,  is  entirely  based  upon 
the  answer.  It  is  always  understood  that  their  acquaintance 
with  the  things  of  real  life  accords  with  this  single  answer.  Such 
a  test  is  not  applicable  to  the  American  girl,  because  with  her 
as  with  the  American  man  of  from  twenty  to  thirty  years,  the 
question  of  love  is  relegated  to  the  background.  The  question 
whether  or  not  she  will  be  married  in  accordance  with  the 
desires  of  her  heart,  whether  or  not  her  life  will  be  a  love 
story,  has  very  often  not  the  slightest  place  in  a  girl's  thoughts. 
Even  for  Ijpose  who  seem  the  most  intent  on  pleasing,  and  who 
make  the  most  of  their  personal  attractions,  —  there  are  fewer  of 
them  than  Frenchmen  suppose,  more  of  them  than  Americans 
will  admit,  —  it  is  still  true  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  their  rela 
tions  with  a  man  are  merely  a  fact  of  social  life.  It  is  simply 
a  way  of  gratifying  their  self-love,  of  becoming  what  the  news- 


SOCIETY  83 

papers  call  "  Prominent  people  in  society  "  by  the  number  of 
their  adorers.  This  love  of  admiration  has  not  the  danger 
here  that  it  would  have  elsewhere,  because,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
the  reserve  of  men  in  America ;  on  the  other,  of  the  girl's 
thorough  understanding  of  the  masculine  character.  They 
began  at  so  early  an  age  to  be  on  intimate  terms  with  men, 
that,  so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  they  are  in  the  position  of 
the  children  of  a  circus  rider  with  horses.  One  girl,  speaking 
to  me  of  a  common  acquaintance,  a  Spanish  woman  married 
in  Rome  and  very  unhappy,  said  :  — 

"She  does  not  know  how  to  manage  her  husband." 

And  she  told  me  how  this  woman's  rival  had  gone  to  work 
to  attract  and  retain  her  unfaithful  husband.  The  sort  of  intel 
ligent  innocence  which  such  remarks  take  for  granted  is  not 
very  intelligible  to  us.  A  diplomat  who  spent  several  years 
here,  and  to  whom  I  repeated  this  conversation  by  way  of 
ascertaining  its  precise  import,  summed  up  his  own  impression 
of  them  —  which  is  severe  —  in  the  words,  "  They  have  a  chaste 
depravity."  He  supported  his  epigram  by  anecdotes  con 
cerning  "engagements,"  as  they  say  here. 

"  I  have  known,"  he  said,  "  many  young  girls  engaged  to 
men  whom  they  had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  marrying. 
They  liked  them  as  lovers,  but  they  did  not  want  them  as  hus 
bands.  I  have  known  others  who  for  months  have  kept  secret 
a  serious  engagement,  in  order  to  retain  the  attentions  which 
are  denied  to  an  'engaged  girl.'  A  girl's  engagement  is,  nine 
times  out  of  ten,  what  an  interesting  situation  is  to  a  wife,  — 
something  to  be  concealed  as  long  as  possible,  and  admitted 
only  when  it  can  be  concealed  no  longer." 

For  my  part,  I  see  in  these  little  facts,  which  I  have  reason 
to  believe  true,  nothing  which  proves  either  profligacy  or  per 
versity.  They  are  a  sign  that  the  American  girl  is,  before  all 
things,  a  reasoning  creature,  fitted  both  by  nature  and  educa 
tion  for  self-guidance. 


84  OUTRE-MER 

"What  is  the  matter  with  you?"  one  of  my  compatriots, 
who  had  stopped  in  New  York  on  his  way  to  Chicago,  asked 
one  of  these  young  girls.  He  had  sat  beside  her  at  two  suc 
cessive  dinners,  and  had  found  her  very  singular  the  second 
time ;  quite  different  from  the  evening  before. 

"  I  am  a  little  nervous,"  she  replied.  "  Some  one  came  to 
see  me  at  five  o'clock,  and  acted  in  a  way  I  don't  like.  I  shall 
be  obliged  to  give  up  my  flirtation  with  him  and  I  am  sorry. 
He  is  such  a  bright  fellow  !  " 

How  shall  I  translate  this  word  "bright,"  to  which  the 
Americans  give  so  much  of  meaning,  to  which  they  add  so  much 
of  quick  adaptability  and  effective  power?  How,  also,  shall  I 
understand  the  mental  processes  of  a  modest  girl  who  extends 
such  confidences  to  an  acquaintance  of  yesterday  ?  Frankness 
like  this  appears  to  me  precisely  a  proof  of  a  simplicity  which 
we  are  ill-fitted  to  understand.  To  recur  to  the  comparison 
lately  used,  I  am  sure  this  child  attached  little  more  importance 
to  the  "  bright  fellow's  "  lack  of  breeding,  than  she  would  have 
attached  to  the  stumbling  of  a  pony  which  she  had  "  badly 
managed."  He  has  broken  his  knees  and  can't  be  used  again. 
What  a  pity  !  "  He  was  such  a  bright  pony  !  "  A  girl  who, 
corrupt  or  impassioned,  would  attach  an  extreme  importance  to 
love  matters,  either  does  not  speak  of  them  or  speaks  in  another 
tone. 

Precisely  because  the  American  girl's  imagination  does  not 
play  around  sentimental  problems,  she  has  far  more  shades  of 
variety  in  her  character  than  her  compeers  in  Europe.  The 
latter  do  not  expect  their  true  development  until  their  heart 
has  spoken,  and  the  influence  of  a  man  has  begun  to  jnould 
them.  The  American  girl  exists  by  herself.  She  knows  it  and 
wills  it  so.  She  is  proud  of  it.  She  has  nothing  in  common 
with  the  Galatea  of  the  pagan  myth  who  receives  all  from  Pyg 
malion,  from  the  embodiment  of  her  beauty  to  the  fire  of  her 
soul.  Her  individuality  is  already  complete  when  she  arrives 


SOCIETY  85 

at  marriage  —  at  the  latest  possible  moment,  as  I  have  already 
said,  if  her  parents  have  ever  so  little  fortune.  She  proposes 
to  choose  a  husband  who  will  take  the  place  of  these  convenient 
parents,  in  the  matter  of  indulgence  and  also  of  wealth.  She 
only  half  counts  upon  the  generosity  of  her  father,  who  is  not 
obliged  to  dower  her,  and  who,  once  she  is  married,  may  reduce 
her  allowance  to  an  absurd  figure.  One  girl,  a  blonde  with 
great  half-mocking  blue  eyes,  —  blue  eyes  which  are  both 
tender  and  tantalizing,  and  a  delicately-formed  nose,  at  once 
sensitive  and  scornful,  told  me  between  smiles  that  showed 
beautiful  teeth,  in  which  there  was  not  a  speck  of  gold  :  — 

"  Mamma  says  that  love  is  like  a  toothache.  So  far  I  have 
no  need  of  a  dentist.  I  shall  never  marry  any  but  a  rich,  a 
very  rich,  man.  The  rest  may  come  as  it  may,  or  not  at  all. 
At  this  moment  I  have  a  suitor  who  is  worth  five  millions.  So 
there  is  no  hurry." 

And  then  she  added,  thoughtfully  :  — 

"I  should  like,  above  all  things,  to  be  a  widow.  I  have 
always  thought  how  nice  it  would  be  to  lose  my  husband  on 
my  wedding-day.  I  should  have  less  reason  to  mourn  as  I 
should  know  him  less.  I  should  like  to  see  him  struck  with 
lightning  as  we  come  out  of  the  church.  It  is  so  nice  to  be  a 
young  widow !  " 

This  lively  little  creature  —  she  was  nineteen  years  old,  — 
libelled  herself  with  all  the  charm  of  a  witty  girl  posing  before  a 
French  novelist.  "  French  novelist,"  the  two  words  have  always 
had  a  vague  aroma  of  scandal  here.  But  her  paradox  only  lent 
weight  to  her  real  thought;  namely,  that  she  would  do  well  to  take 
time  before  she  bartered  her  present  lot  for  one  more  uncertain 
and  more  dangerous.  Many  of  her  companions  think  as  she  does. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  they  willingly  remain  single  till  they  are 
twenty-five  or  twenty-six  years  old,  and  in  these  long  years  of 
unchecked  independence,  each  one  follows  her  own  tastes,  each 
her  own  fancy,  her  own  nature,  indeed,  oppressed  by  so  little 


86  OUTRE-MER 

constraint.  Hence  it  results  that  the  individuality  of  each 
nature  is  amply  developed.  Innumerable  types  also  work 
themselves  out,  which  a  traveller  of  a  few  months'  experience 
is  utterly  unable  to  distinguish  in  even  the  most  general  way. 
Those  which  I  am  about  to  sketch  are,  perhaps,  not  the  most 
happily  chosen.  They  have  at  least  the  merit  of  having  been 
studied  from  life. 

The  most  artless  of  these  young-girl  types,  and  to  my  mind 
the  most  touching,  for  reasons  which  I  will  explain,  is  the 
Beauty.  There  are  two  or  three  in  every  city,  and  their  suprem 
acy  is  so  well  recognized  that  you  are  continually  receiving 
such  invitations  as  "  Pray  come  to  tea  to-morrow  afternoon,  to 

meet  Miss ,the  Richmond  beauty."  I  say  Richmond  at 

random ;  in  its  place  put  Savannah,  Charleston,  Albany,  Provi 
dence,  any  city  north  or  south  that  you  please.  To  merit  her 
title,  the  Beauty  must  indeed  be  lovely  with  that  radiant  bright 
ness  which  extinguishes  all  other  women  at  a  ball,  a  dinner,  or 
the  theatre.  She  must  be  very  tall,  very  well  formed,  the  lines  of 
her  face  and  figure  must  lend  themselves  to  that  sort  of  repro 
duction  of  which  the  newspapers  and  their  readers  are  so  fond. 
She  must  also  know  how  to  dress  with  magnificence,  which  here 
is  inseparable  from  elegance. 

Once  recognized,  though  she  may  not  be  more  than  twenty 
years  old,  she  enters  upon  a  sort  of  official,  almost  a  civic,  ex 
istence.  In  the  newspaper  columns  devoted  to  "  Social  Gossip," 
the  types  spontaneously  form  her  name,  so  often  have  the  com 
positors  set  it  up.  She  is  as  necessary  a  part  of  every  grand 
dinner  and  ball  as  the  roses  at  a  dollar  apiece,  and  the  cham 
pagne  brut.  Her  own  city  cannot  suffice  to  her,  or,  rather,  she 
would  not  be  fulfilling  her  mission  if  she  did  not  represent  that 
city  in  New  York,  Washington,  Newport,  at  the  races,  the 
regattas,  all  the  events  where,  as  on  a  stage,  American  society 
displays  itself.  She  is,  in  fact,  a  social  actress  and  a  champion 


SOCIETY  87 

of  her  order,  like  a  master  of  billiards  or  chess.  Let  us  be  more 
ambitious,  —  like  a  pugilist,  like  Jim  Corbett  the  Californian  ! 

For  her  successes  to  be  perfect,  she  must  compete  for  her 
place  "abroad,"  and  play  her  part  as  leading  social  lady  in 
Paris,  London,  Rome.  When  she  returns  from  Europe  with 
her  crop  of  laurels,  she  still  does  not  lay  down  her  arms.  She 
has  a  record  to  hold,  and  the  day  when  she  shall  be  assuredly, 
incontestably,  excelled  by  a  rival,  it  will  be  with  her  as  with  the 
Boston  boxer,  the  hapless  J.  L.  Sullivan,  who  no  longer  counts 
since  he  has  been  once  beaten,  —  as  with  the  Teutonic  and 
the  Majestic  since  the  Campania  has  made  the  passage  from 
Europe  in  five  days  sixteen  hours  and  a  few  minutes.  It  is  all 
over  —  they  belong  to  the  past. 

Behind  the  Beauty,  to  keep  up  the  insane  expenses  of  a  life 
always  in  full  dress,  in  the  most  senselessly  luxurious  circle  in 
the  two  hemispheres,  is  a  father  who  most  likely  is  never  seen, 
who  divides  his  life  between  his  office,  his  club,  and  sometimes, 
in  certain  cities,  the  bar  of  the  best  hotel.  His  daughter,  to 
whom  he  makes  an  allowance  which  would  suffice  for  the 
trousseau  of  a  princess,  is  dear  to  him  by  a  complex  senti 
ment  into  which  enters  less  of  affection  than  of  pride.  He 
sometimes  passes  entire  seasons,  not  to  say  years,  without  see 
ing  her  when  she  crosses  the  ocean.  Even  when  she  is  in  the 
United  States  and  at  home,  the  meals  which  he  takes  with  her 
could  be  counted.  Nevertheless  he  loves  her,  but  by  such  a 
displacement,  such  a  projection  of  his  personality  as  Balzac 
described,  with  the  blemish  of  his  habitual  extravagance,  when 
he  pictured  the  friendship  of  Vautrin  for  Lucien  de  Rubempre". 

"He  was  myself,  young,  and  brilliant,"  said  the  convict. 
"  From  the  depths  of  my  cell  I  put  on  his  coat.  I  drove 
in  his  tilbury ;  I  entered  drawing-rooms  with  him." 

Probably  the  business  man,  laboring  over  railway  plans  and 
manufacturing  projects,  accompanies  his  daughter  by  a  similar 
imagination.  His  money  goes  about  in  this  young  girl ;  that  is 


88  OUTRE-MER 

to  say,  his  will,  his  labor,  all  that  is  most  personal  to  himself. 
Whether  he  marries  her  to  some  noble  Italian,  Englishman,  or 
Frenchman,  or  whether  he  refuses  her  to  the  nobleman,  —  the 
American  father's  vanity  may  take  on  either  of  these  forms,  — 
she  serves  to  prove  to  him  his  power.  He  has  this  daughter  just 
as  he  has  a  twenty-story  "  building  "  which  bears  his  name,  a 
picture  gallery  mentioned  in  the  guide-books,  as  he  has  his 
stocks.-  "  I  know  my  social  value,"  said  one  of  these  girls. 
She  spoke  of  herself  as  of  a  certificate  of  New  York  Central,  or 
Chicago,  Burlington,  and  Quincy  stock.  Social  value,  —  this  is 
probably  the  best  definition  of  this  singular  creature,  whose 
existence  consists  —  in  the  heart  of  a  democracy  —  in  under 
going  as  much  representative  etiquette  as  if  she  were  maid  of 
honor  to  a  princess,  or  herself  a  princess  in  a  court  that  was 
always  making  festival.  Speaking  of  one  of  these  girls,  whose 
health  was  failing  in  the  midst  of  her  social  victories,  and  who 
has  since  died  of  them,  a  very  acute  woman  dropped  this 
word,  to  which  I  shall  add  nothing,  so  perfectly  does  it  seem 
to  me  to  express  that  which  must  be  the  last  calamity  of  such 
a  lot :  — 

"  I  always  longed  to  condole  with  her  upon  her  toilettes  !  " 

A  second  type,  less  rare  than  the  professional  beauty,  but 
still  less  common  than  many  others,  is  the  young  girl  with 
ideas.  This  class  may  be  divided  into  two  groups,  —  the 
convinced  girl  and  the  ambitious  girl.  Like  the  Beauty,  this 
girl  lives  in  society  with  that  sort  of  extravagance  so  difficult 
to  avoid  in  America.  She  also  figures  in  the  daily  procession 
of  the  fashionable  carnival;  only  she  is  not,  like  the  other, 
at  the  head  of  the  procession.  She  has  not  attained  to  this 
incontestable  and  somewhat  mechanical  success.  For  that 
matter,  she  does  not  desire  it.  She  is  a  girl  who  has  laid 
down  for  herself  a  special  programme,  and  is  occupied  in  car 
rying  it  out  with  a  regularity  and  perseverance  that  she  allows 


SOCIETY  89 

nothing  to  interrupt.  Sometimes  this  is  the  case  of  the  con 
vinced  girl.  This  programme  is  in  the  purely  moral  order, 
and  of  a  very  high  type.  For  example,  she  has  said  to  herself 
that  marriage  being  a  contract,  the  man  ought  to  bring  to  it 
the  same  loyalty  as  the  woman,  the  same  pure  past,  the  same 
innocence  ;  and  that  she  will  not  engage  herself  to  any  one  who 
has  more  past  experience  than  she  herself.  This  puritan  rigor 
of  conscience  would  seem  strange  in  a  setting  of  such  frivolity, 
if  you  did  not  recall  to  mind  that  a  never-failing  current  of 
religious  ardor  flows  in  the  veins  of  these  descendants  of  the 
exiles  of  the  Mayflower  or  the  companions  of  Penn. 

Or,  again,  the  girl  with  ideas  decides  to  take  part  in  politics. 
For  this  two  things  are  required,  —  that  some  person  nearly 
connected  with  her  shall  hold  some  high  position  or  be  working 
to  that  end ;  and  that  she  herself  have  time  to  direct  or  aid 
that  person ;  she  also  is  working  for  that.  Such  is  the  thor- 
oughly  American  peculiarity  of  her  character.  She  is  a  realist 
and  insists  upon  having  the  reality  of  that  power  of  which  she 
will  have  the  semblance,  through  a  father,  a  brother,  a  husband. 
She  strains  every  nerve  to  make  the  two  former  senators,  mem 
bers  of  Congress,  ambassadors ;  she  will  endure  the  same  toils 
to  enable  the  latter  to  occupy  a  similar  situation,  perhaps  to 
bring  him  to  the  White  House ;  and  at  the  same  time  she 
labors  that  she  may  be,  when  the  time  arrives,  a  perfect  instru 
ment  for  the  service  of  this  ambassador  or  president,  making 
herself  familiar  with  politics  and  administration,  attending  the 
sessions  of  legislatures,  watching  the  workings  of  the  electoral 
machine,  following  the  complications  of  the  European  chess 
board. 

Such  a  one  is  both  earnest  and  ambitious.  There  is  another 
type  that  is  ambitious  only.  This  girl  has  made  up  her  mind 
that  her  name  shall  be  written  in  the  golden  book  of  the  Eng 
lish  peerage,  that  she  will  marry  a  lord.  For  many  years  she 
has  been  preparing  herself  for  this,  losing  no  opportunity  of 


90  OUTRE-MER 

gaining  entrance  to  the  upper  circles  of  English  society,  mean 
while  occupying  herself  with  overcoming  the  obstinacy  of  her 
father,  whose  opposition  to  international  marriages  is  a  matter 
of  principle,  —  of  jingoism,  to  use  the  Anglo-Saxon  equivalent 
of  our  French  chauvinisme,  —  and  also  a  matter  of  judgment. 
So  many  of  these  unions  have  turned  out  badly  !  None  the 
less,  the  young  girl  will  succeed  at  last  in  joining  the  small  pha 
lanx  of  American  peeresses  ;  the  nervous  tension  of  her  expres 
sion  is  my  warrant  for  that,  and  so  is  the  decided  curve  of  her 
lips,  with  the  vigorous  little  chin.  And  once  having  attained 
to  the  British  Olympus,  she  will  need  to  be  taught  nothing 
either  of  people  or  of  customs  —  she,  whose  grandfather  began 
life  in  a  little  restaurant  in  Chicago,  before  the  fire ! 

An  ambitious  girl  who  is  less  gifted,  especially  if  she  is 
less  rich,  cheerfully  becomes  a  "bluffer,"  to  borrow  once 
again  a  significant  term  of  the  national  game  of  poker.  She 
went  to  Europe  last  year  with  the  idea  well  fixed  in  her  pretty 
brown  head  to  play  the  same  game  with  some  rich  man  over 
there  that  so  many  European  adventurers  have  come  over 
here  to  play  upon  rich  girls.  What  could  be  fairer?  She 
knows  that  her  father's  fortune  will  not  endure  investigation, 
and  she  knows,  too,  that  every  one  else  knows  it  and  that  the 
brilliant  parties  given  in  their  mansion  on  Fifth  Avenue 
deceive  no  one.  The  "bluffer"  has  told  herself  that  her 
beauty  will  make  a  sensation  in  London  and  Paris;  that  she 
will  easily  turn  some  simple  head;  that  her  would-be  husband 
will  take  her  luxurious  life,  her  fine  clothes,  above  all,  the 
fact  that  she  is  an  American  girl  abroad,  as  authentic  wit 
nesses  of  millions.  She  has  had  before  he _  illustrious  examples 
of  successful  bluffs  of  this  sort.  Unluckily,  she  has  chanced 
upon  a  young  man  who,  though  very  elegant  and  well-con 
nected,  has  come  to  the  end  of  his  own  resources,  and  being 
reduced  to  expedients  has  resolved  to  "bluff"  some  rich 
foreigner.  The  two  actors  are  mutually  deceived,  and  the, 


SOCIETY  91 

young  man,  coming  to  New  York  to  press  his  suit,  has 
departed,  after  explanations  which  must  have  been  most 
deliciously  amusing!  Unhappily,  comedies  of  this  kind 
are  played  without  spectators. 

Another  character  more  frequently  assumed  is  that  of  the 
tomboy.  She  has  generally  been  to  Europe  —  for  that 
matter  you  must  always  ask  this  question  with  regard  to  every 
American  girl.  She  there  became  conscious  of  her  individu 
ality,  as  a  philosopher  might  say.  She  knows  that  she  is 
"the  American  girl,"  and  she  wants  to  be  even  more  so  than 
she  is.  She  makes^game  of  you  in  her  own  character  by 
exaggerating  it  beyond  all  bounds  of  probability.  She  will 
tell  you  how,  in  Paris,  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  a  gentleman  took 
her  for  what  she  was  not  and  followed  her.  She  found  the 
adventure  "great  fun." 

You  feel  it  incumbent  upon  you  to  excuse  the  indiscretion 
of  your  compatriot? 

"Stupid  thing!"  she  replies;  "he  didn't  so  much  as  speak 
to  me." 

This  is  the  girl  who  opens  her  doors  to  a  class  in  "high- 
kicking,"  the  art  of  lifting  one's  foot  as  high  as  possible. 
She  holds  the  record  of  six  feet  three  inches,  none  of  her 
friends  having  been  able  to  excel  her. 

"What  a  pity  that  you  can't  see  me  kick!  "  she  says  to  you; 
"without  bending  the  knee,  you  know." 

This  is  the  girl  who,  dining  with  a  young  married  friend, 
without  her  mother,  asks  you  for  cigarettes,  smokes  four  at  a 
time,  —  and  exclaims :  — 

"To  think  that  I  have  to  come  to  Jessie's  to  get  a  few  puffs 
of  straight-cut." 

She  has  the  street- Arab  in  her  make-up,  but  the  American 
street- Arab;  not  Gavroche,  but  Gallegher.  I  refer  the  reader 
to  Mr.  Richard  Harding  Davis' s  clever  story,  that  he  may  ap 
preciate  the  difference  between  the  innocence  of  Parisian  and 


92  OUTRE-MER 

the  coarseness  of  American  blackguardism.  Compare  one 
of  their  pantomimes  with  one  of  our  street  singers.  The 
American  girl  when  she  undertakes  to  be  masculine  is  discon 
certingly  daring  in  her  speech. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  the  little  trousers  with  which  the 
virtuous  women  of  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore  have  clothed 
their  statues?  " 

I  saw  one  of  my  French  friends  start  at  this  question  sud 
denly  put  to  him  in  a  drawing-room  of  virtuous  New  England. 
Another  of  them  found  himself  growing  interested  in  one  of 
the  innumerable  Mays  whom  you  meet  at  all  the  balls  and 
afternoon  teas.  One  of  May's  friends  —  it  happened  to  be 
the  smoker  of  cigarettes  —  said  to  him  saucily :  — 

"Well,  when  is  the  marriage  coming  off?  She  is  very 
nice,  you  know,  very  nice !  It  is  a  pity  that  she  has  nothing 
pretty  but  her  face.  Yes,"  she  went  on  teasingly;  "we  slept 
in  the  same  room  a  whole  week  in  the  country,"  and  a 
minute  description  followed  —  "hollow  chest,  projecting 
shoulder-blades,  thin  legs,  no  hips  —  nothing  but  hair  —  hair 
—  up  to  there." 

And  she  bends  her  leg  and  points  to  the  bend  of  her  knee 
with  her  mocking  laugh  like  a  schoolboy  who  should  describe 
to  you  some  creature  whom  he  had  met  on  the  Boulevard 
Saint-Michel  on  a  holiday  evening. 

Another,  feeling  bored  one  evening  at  a  formal  dinner, 
wrote  a  few  lines  on  the  back  of  her  menu,  folded  the  card, 
and  sent  it  to  an  officer  of  our  marine  on  his  way  to  Chicago, 
whom  she  had  known  just  three  days. 

"I  love  you,"  she  wrote.  "What  more  will  you  have?" 
She  went  into  fits  of  laughter  over  the  expression  of  the 
man's  countenance  at  the  absurd  joke  of  this  make-believe 
declaration. 

Another,  invited  to  tea  by  Miss  May's  lover,  and  not  suc 
ceeding  in  getting  her  mother's  permission,  wrote  to  him, 


SOCIETY  93 

"If  I  were  a  French  girl  they  couldn't  treat  me  worse.  That 
is  all  the  good  it  does  to  be  an  American,"  and  then  by  way 
of  postscript,  "You  know  that  if  you  insist,  I  will  come  all 
the  same."  And  this  was  not  a  mere  mode  of  speech. 

The  tomboy  is  a  sort  of  young  woman  who  in  general  excels 
in  all  sports,  wears  tailor-made  gowns,  walks  erect,  plays 
billiards,  and  finds  much  less  pleasure  in  being  courted  than 
in  devising  some  new  excitement,  such  as  a  ride  at  full  speed 
on  the  cow-catcher  of  a  locomotive.  I  have  met  the  daughter 
of  a  director  of  a  great  railway,  of  whom  this  was  the  favorite 
amusement.  She  had  covered  miles  upon  miles  of  the  prairie 
—  squatting  on  the  metal  platform  above  which  puffed  the 
machine,  and  by  the  expression  with  which  she  exclaimed 
"  How  exciting ! "  I  could  see  how  her  nerves  must  have 
thrilled  with  the  rush  of  speed  and  danger. 

This  is  the  physical  tomboy,  if  one  may  so  speak,  in  con 
trast  with  whom  arises  the  more  serious  face  of  the  intellec 
tual  tomboy;  the  girl  who  is  up  to  the  times,  who  has  read 
everything,  understood  everything,  not  superficially,  but 
really,  with  an  energy  of  culture  that  could  put  to  shame  the 
whole  Parisian  fraternity  of  letters.  The  trouble  is  that  nine 
times  out  of  ten  this  mind,  which  is  capable  of  assimilating 
everything,  is  incapable  of  tasting  anything.  It  is  an  iron 
stomach,  like  that  of  Didymus,  tHe  commentator  of  the  deca 
dence,  whom  the  Alexandrians  called  the  Scoliast,  with  entrails 
of  brass  —  with  no  palate.  Though  like  all  the  others  she  gets 
her  gowns  from  the  best  houses  of  the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  there 
is  not  a  book  of  Darwin,  Huxley,  Spencer,  Renan,  Taine, 
which  she  has  not  studied,  not  a  painter  or  sculptor  of  whose 
works  she  could  not  compile  a  catalogue,  not  a  school  of 
poetry  or  romance  of  which  she  does  not  know  the  principles. 
She  subscribes  impartially  to  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  and 
the  gazettes  of  the  latest  coteries  of  the  Latin  Quarter  or 
Montmartre.  Only  she  does  not  distinguish  between  them. 


94  OUTRE-MER 

/ 
She  has  not  an  idea  that  is  not  exact,  and  yet  she  gives  you 

/  the  strange  impression  as  if  she  had  none.  One  would  say 
that  she  had  ordered  her  intellect  somewhere,  as  we  would 
order  a  piece  of  furniture,  to  measure,  and  with  as  many 
compartments  as  there  are  branches  of  human  knowledge. 
She  acquires  them  only  that  she  may  put  them  into  these 
drawers.  This  is  the  most  striking  illustration  of  the  misdi 
rected  effort  from  which  this  civilization  suffers,  and  the  proof 
that  effort  can  replace  nature  only  to  a  certain  point,  I 
remember  that  as  we  were  leaving  the  palace  of  one  of  the 
Chicago  millionaires,  Forain  said  to  me  in  a  voice  fairly 
quivering  with  the  frantic  longing  of  a  sensitive  artist  for  a 
glimpse  of  simple  human  nature :  — 

"  Oh,  for  a  concierge's  lodge !     What  would  I  give  to  see  a 
concierge's  lodge ! " 

Before  the  intellectual  girl  one  longs  to  cry :  — 

"Oh,  for  one  ignorance,  one  error,  just  a  single  one.  May 
she  make  a  blunder,  may  she  prove  not  to  know !  " 

In  vain.  A  mind  may  be  mistaken,  a  mind  may  be  igno 
rant,  but  never  a  tKinking-machine ! 

A  new  type  now  comes  into  view,  that  of  the  coquette,  lor 
she  too  exists  —  the  feminine  and  compliant  coquette,  who  is 
somewhat  like  what  we  know  in  Europe,  though  with  decided 
shades  of  difference. 

First  there  is  the  collector,  she  whose  wiles  are  exercised 
upon  several  persons  at  a  time,  usually  four,  for  a  variety  in 
jealousies,  —  two  somewhat  elderly  adorers,  and  two  very  young 
ones.  In  a  parenthesis  I  may  observe  that  it  is  a  striking  char 
acteristic  of  the  United  States  that  a  man's  age  appears  not  to 
have  the  same  importance  to  the  American  as  to  the  French 
girl.  Arnolphe  need  not  here  envy  Horace  the  charm  of  his 
twenty-five  years,  so  far  as  Agnes  is  concerned.  The  proof  is 
the  readiness  of  young  girls  to  marry  rich  old  men,  and  the 
usual  happiness  of  such  unions. 


SOCIETY  95 

My  diplomatic  friend  insists  that  calmness  of  temperament 
alone  explains  this  anomaly.  This  hypothesis  is  scarcely  to  be 
reconciled  on  the  other  hand  with  that  admiration  of  "  looks," 
of  the  physical  beauty  of  man,  which,  on  its  part,  explains 
certain  elopements  of  which  the  papers  occasionally  speak.  I 
think  it  more  correct  to  recognize  that  an  American  woman's 
love  of  admiration  is  no  more  than  other  things  a  matter  of 
impulse.  Will  is  her  guide  here  too,  and  leads  her  to  as  much 
satisfaction  in  turning  an  old  head  as  a  young  one.  The  proof 
of  this  element  of  intention  is  found  in  her  way  of  going  to 
work.  She  almost  always  uses  compliment,  but  so  obvious,  so 
terribly  downright,  that  you  know  not  how  to  take  it.  It  is  a 
way  of  asking  you  for  as  much  in  exchange  which,  those  say 
who  know,  you  may  make  as  extravagant  as  you  like.  They 
will  not  believe  much  that  you  say,  but  they  will  like  it. 

"  I  do  love  the  French  so ! "  said  one  woman  in  my  pres 
ence.  "  They  know  so  well  how  to  pay  compliments !  They 
go  at  it  in  such  a  way  that  you  believe  that  they  really  mean 
it."  And  they  readily  add:  "Write  to  me.  Tell  me  what 
you  think  of  me. " 

It  is  this  admiring  interest  that  the  "collector"  desires  to 
arouse  and  keep  alive.  It  is  enough  for  her;  she  is  always 
ready  enough  to  be  displeased  if  the  correspondence  thus  sug 
gested  should  go  so  far  as  a  declaration,  or  if  this  admiring 
interest  became  bold  enough  to  risk  a  caress  —  unless  indeed 
the  "collector"  herself  becomes  equally  interested.  For, 
unhappily,  my  friends  assure  me,  there  is  a  type  of  young  girl 
who  still  is  modest,  who  yet  permits  herself  to  receive  trinkets, 
jewels,  even  pairs  of  horses,  from  the  admirers  whom  she 
keeps  on  a  footing  of  Platonism !  She  does  not  go  often  so 
far,  but  contents  herself  with  summer  flirtations  with  men 
who  are  rich  enough  to  give  her  the  use  of  their  carriages 
during  the  season. 

This  singular  variety,  this  virgin  nature  which  remains  pure 


96  OUTRE-MER 

by  calculation,  while  still  taking  advantage  of  her  beauty  for 
the  benefit  of  her  own  whims,  appears  less  odious  here  than 
elsewhere. 

The  financial  relations  of  man  and  wife  are  very  singular  in 
this  country,  where  the  wife  most  frequently  bears  to  her  hus- 
,  band  the  relation  of  disbursing  agent,  hardly  ever  seeing  him, 
receiving  from  him  a  profusion  of  money,  which  she  lavishes 
by  herself  alone  upon  luxuries  which  her  husband  never 
enjoys.  He  is  never  there,  unless  in  the  form  of  checks! 

The  species,  happily,  is  rare,  so  rare  that  I  speak  of  it  only 
by  hearsay,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  often  met  the 
sentimental  coquette,  her  who  has  the  excuse  of  believing  her 
self  to  be  "desperately  in  love  "  with  the  man  with  whom  she 
flirts.  The  extravagant  speech,  so  characteristic  of  America, 
makes  use  of  such  expressions  to  designate  the  mild  passion- 
ettes,  which  are  at  least  so  far  original  that  they  are  indulged 
in  by  these  romantic  persons  with  a  self-possession  in  which 
all  the  energy  of  the  race  is  revealed.  When  the  American 
girl  has  been  attracted  by  a  young  man,  she  does  not  content 
herself,  as  our  schoolgirls  do,  with  timidly  dreaming  about 
him.  She  always  has  some  obliging  friend  whom  she  de 
spatches  to  him. 

"Miss  N is  very  anxious  to  make  your  acquaintance. 

Come,  and  I  will  present  you  to  her."  It  is  regularly  another 
girl  who  thus  plays  the  part  of  go-between.  She  goes  farther. 
"Why  don't  you  pay  attention  to  Nannie?  She  is  charming, 
I  assure  you.  I  think  you  would  please  her." 

She  doesn't  think  it  —  she  knows  it;  for  Nannie  has  made 
her  her  confidante  and  entrusted  her  with  this  message.  But 
Nannie,  with  her  romantic  daring,  is  a  reasoning  child.  Who 
has  said  that  the  Americans  are  like  pins,  always  held  by  the 
head?  After  a  certain  time  she  will  perceive  that  she  was 
mistaken  as  to  the  intensity  of  her  feelings,  especially  if  a 
marriage  which  pleases  her  becomes  possible.  Once  married 


SOCIETY  9? 

to  another  and  quite  happy,  if  she  ever  meets  the  young  man 
of  her  little  passion,  she  will  say  to  him :  — 

"  How  foolish  I  was !     But  how  I  loved  you !  " 

And  in  this  reminiscence  there  will  be  so  much  of  frank 
good-fellowship  that  the  idea  of  resuming  with  the  married 
woman  the  interrupted  romance  begun  with  the  young  girl 
will  not  occur  a  second  time  to  the  man  who  is  the  object  of 
this  singular  confidence. 

With  respect  of  these  types,  which  nearly  all  lend  them 
selves  to  satire,  it  is  only  just  to  sketch  another  figure,  which 
is  also  to  be  found  in  this  country  of  the  "always  too  much," 
that  of  the  well-balanced  girl.  The  charming  personality  of 
the  young  girl  who  is  all  propriety  and  harmony  is  of  all 
countries  and  all  times.  Moliere  modelled  his  Henrietta 
after  her,  Dickens  his  Agnes,  Zola  his  Denise.  That  which 
distinguishes  her  in  America  is  the  precocity  and  universality 
of  her  experience.  Usually,  in  London  as  in  Paris,  the  very 
well  balanced  girl  is,  above  all  things,  a  child  who  has  been 
well  cared  for,  closely  watched,  whose  life  has  been  carefully 
regulated,  whose  education  is  narrow.  She  has  either  made 
the  best  of  very  painful  circumstances,  or  else  has  undergone 
a  very  rigid  discipline. 

Here,  on  the  contrary,  she  has  preserved  her  natural  poise 
in  the  midst  of  the  most  lavish,  unrestrained,  and  compli 
cated  life  possible.  But  neither  her  father's  wealth,  nor  the 
luxury  in  which  she  is  wrapped,  nor  the  world-fever  by  which 
she  is  swept  along,  have  been  able  to  prevail  against  her  judg 
ment  and  reasoning  faculty.  By  herself,  she  has  distinguished 
between  all  the  sensations  born  of  her  surroundings,  recog 
nized  those  which  are  sound  and  those  which  are  unsound, 
chosen  the  former  and  repelled  the  latter.  She  has  moulded 
for  herself  a  character  entirely  in  accord  with  her  social  posi 
tion,  and  yet  individual  and  peculiar  to  herself. 

To  a  girl  like  this,  we  know  by  instinct,  no  test  would  prove 
H 


98  OUTRE-MER 

dangerous,  no  accident  of  fortune  find  her  other  than  she  ought 
to  be.  So  clearly  do  we  perceive  her  to  be  energetic,  clear 
sighted,  and  gentle,  that  we  understand  that  the  vigor  of  her 
race,  so  unrestrained  in  every  one  else,  is  in  her  kept  under 
control,  in  her  reaches  its  limit.  The  absolute  freedom  of 
feminine  manners  in  this  country  has  not  destroyed  in  her  a 
single  one  of  the  graces  of  her  sex,  and  these  graces  multiply 
with  such  vigor  as  will  convince  her  husband,  not  alone  of 
her  irreproachable  fidelity,  but  that  she  will  be  a  support  in 
trouble,  of  whatever  nature.  Like  all  the  others,  she  is  a 
highly  finished  person,  self-made,  and  sufficient  to  herself, 
but  with  enough  of  intelligent  good-nature  to  understand 
another  person  who  is  near  her,  to  receive  him,  help  him,  and 
associate  herself  with  him. 

That  this  young  girl  is  not  very  rare  in  the  United  States 
proves  that,  if  the  principle  of  unrestrained  freedom  of  action 
has  produced  grave  faults,  it  has  also  produced  new  shades  of 
moral  beauty  and  charm.  This  creature,  a  mixture  of  femi 
nine  delicacy  and  virile  will,  attracts,  surprises,  entices,  com 
forts  us.  We  respect  her,  and  she  moves  us.  We  are  grate 
ful  to  her  for  existing,  as  for  one  of  the  noble  things  of  the 
world;  and  we  could  dream  —  so  perfect  is  she  —  of  having 
her  as  a  part  of  our  lives,  as  confidante,  counsellor,  friend, — 
I  was  about  to  say,  and  I  am  sure  that  it  is  the  best  eulogy, — 
as  comrade. 

Well  or  ill  balanced,  coquettish  or  sentimental,  learned  or 
reckless,  designing  or  simple,  the  young  American  girl  is 
before  all  things  else  a  whole  little  universe,  formed  and 
developed  entirely  apart  from  masculine  influence.  It  would 
seem  as  if  the  difference  of  spirit,  of  habits,  almost  of  species, 
between  her  and  her  father,  which  I  have  already  noticed,  so 
entire  as  to  be  incredible,  must  inevitably  result  in  some 
terrible  moral  catastrophe.  If  such  are  rare,  it  is  because 


SOCIETY  99 

here,  more  than  anywhere  else,  they  practise  the  sensible  and 
humane  maxim,  "Live  and  let  live."  Nevertheless,  this  ex 
treme  liberty  is  saved  from  friction  only  by  the  avoidance  of 
familiarity;  with  the  natural  result  —  of  great  importance  for 
the  young  girl,  and  still  more  for  the  young  wife  —  that  home 
life  is  less  known  in  the  United  States  than  in  any  other 
country. 

A  thousand  signs  indicate  this  sort  of  disintegration  of  the 
domestic  hearth;  in  the  first  place,  the  singular  facility  of 
travelling,  and  especially  the  number  of  rich  people  who  lead 
that  hotel  life  which  is  so  nearly  unintelligible  to  Europeans, 
and  especially  to  the  French. 

"We  call  Rochester  our  home,  but  we  have  spent  ten  win 
ters  here,"  said  a  much-admired  young  woman.  As  these  ten 
winters  spent  in  New  York  correspond  with  ten  summers  at 
Newport,  as  many  autumns  at  Lenox,  and  probably  several 
springs  in  Paris,  it  may  be  imagined  how  much  of  a  place  the 
real  home  has  in  the  life  of  such  a  family  This  singularly 
movable  manner  of  life  becomes  more  pronounced  as  one 
travels  westward.  The  story  goes  that  some  cities  in  the  far 
West  are  entirely  composed  of  wooden  huts,  grouped  around 
an  immense  hotel. 

It  is  in  the  hotel,  that  caravansary  furnished  with  the  ex 
travagant  luxury  which  newly  made  rich  people  delight  in, 
that  is  sketched  the  first  rude  outline  of  that  social  life  which 
you  will  find  in  all  its  glory  in  the  great  centres  on<the  Atlan 
tic  seaboard.  The  family  live  in  a  hotel  with  their  private 
drawing-room,  which  they  adorn  with  pictures  and  draperies, 
and  often  with  their  own  furniture. 

One  must  have  sojourned  in  one  of  these  hotels  and  dined 
with  these  people  to  be  able  to  realize  how  entirely  the  mem 
bers  of  these  families  live  side  by  side  rather  than  with  one 
another.  They  eat,  indeed,  at  the  same  table,  but  no  one  ever 
waits  for  another.  The  wife  or  the  daughter  is  getting  up  from 


100  OUTRE-MER 

the  table  when  the  father  or  the  husband  comes  in  to  breakfast, 
lunch,  or  dinner.  It  is  a  very  commonplace,  but  very  expressive 
token  of  that  which  is  the  basis  of  American  family  life,  —  every 
one  for  himself  and  by  himself. 

The  young  girl  has  this  principle  written  on  her  innermost 
heart.  Everything  conspires  to  impress  it  upon  her,  and  she  has 
too  fully  accepted  it  not  to  know,  when  she  marries,  that  this  rule 
is  to  govern  her  own  household  as  it  did  her  father's  before  her. 
She  is  far  enough  from  expecting,  as  our  girls  do,  to  find  in  the 
man  she  marries  one  with  whom  she  will  share  every  thought, 
a  friend  who  will  train  her  mind,  her  heart,  her  whole  being. 
For  that  matter,  one  cannot  say  of  her,  as  we  say  in  French, 
that  in  marrying  she  becomes  a  woman  (femme).  She  was 
that  before  she  married,  in  her  ideas,  her  character,  her  freedom, 
her  habits.  The  difference  is  that  on  the  one  hand  the  possibili 
ties  of  the  future  will  be  fewer  for  her,  and  on  the  other,  that  she 
will  be  of  less  account.  With  us  the  passage  from  girlhood  to 
wifehood  is  an  event.  Here  it  is  quite  the  other  thing ;  it  is  a 
resignation. 

Why  is  the  young  married  woman  less  courted  than  the  young 
girl  in  the  United  States  ?  This  is  the  first  question  that  forces 
itself  upon  the  foreigner  after  a  few  weeks'  residence.  Is  it 
that  Americans  respect  marriage  more  than  we  do  ?  Is  it  that, 
their  manners  being  simpler  and  purer,  the  young  man's  heart 
revolts  at  the  bitter  emotions,  the  cankered  sadness,  of  unlawful 
love  even  in  the  moment  of  happiness  ?  Is  it  because  time  is 
wanting  for  the  deep-laid,  far-reaching  processes  of  seduction  ? 
Is  it  the  hatred  of  falsehood,  so  strikingly  characteristic  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon?  Certain  it  is  that  in  society  you  almost  never 
hear  an  allusion  to  such  connections  as  abound  in  Paris,  and 
even  in  London.  American  conversation  always  avoids  the 
line  of  demarcation  between  coquetry  and  intimacy,  between 
the  surroundings  of  a  fault  and  the  fault  itself. 


SOCIETY 


"Such  things  do  not  exist  in  the  United  States."  So  said 
one  and  another  of  my  women  friends  here,  and  when  I  de 
murred,  adducing  the  conduct  of  such  and  such  women  with 
such  and  such  men,  as  appearing  to  me  to  be  indisputable  evi 
dence,  they  would  answer  :  — 

"  These  women  only  want  to  be  talked  about,  because  that 
is  the  way  people  do  in  Europe.  Only,  instead  of  going  on 
secretly,  they  make  everything  as  public  as  possible,  precisely 
because  there  is  nothing  serious." 

The  foreigner  can  only  reply  by  the  favorite  word  of  doubt 
of  the  most  sceptical  and  least  American  of  people,  "  Sara." 

Two  reasons,  very  different  in  character,  however,  make  it 
evident  a  priori,  so  to  speak,  that  the  married  woman  must 
be  more  carefully  guarded  here  than  in  the  Old  World.  The 
first,  which  should  neither  be  exaggerated  nor  underrated,  is 
the  reserve  capital  of  puritanism  which,  in  the  past  fifty  years, 
has  declined  from  year  to  year,  almost  from  month  to  month, 
but  has  not  entirely  disappeared.  One  of  the  most  eloquent 
magistrates  of  Massachusetts,  Judge  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes, 
has  said  in  one  of  those  brief  and  impressive  speeches  in  which 
he  excels  :  — 

"Even  though  our  mode  of  expressing  our  wonder,  our 
awful  fear,  our  abiding  trust  in  face  of  life  and  death  and  the 
unfathomable  world  has  changed,  yet  at  this  day,  even  now,  we 
New  Englanders  are  still  leavened  with  the  puritan  ferment." 

This  is  true  in  New  England,  which  still  continues  to  be  the 
moral  leaven  of  America.  Now  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  for 
two  hundred  years  the  Mosaic  law,  which  punished  adultery 
with  death,  was  written  in  the  codes  of  New  England.  The 
first  mitigation  of  this  stern  law  was  simply  to  brand  with  the 
letter  A  the  persons  convicted  of  this  crime.  Such  ferocities 
of  legislation  may  be  done  away  with,  but  they  leave  behind 
them,  in  public  opinion,  traces  not  to  be  lightly  effaced.  The 
campaign  of  Dr.  Parkhurst,  last  winter,  against  the  prostitutes 


/102  t  ;\  t;t  -Yet  L   OlfTRE-MER 

of  New  York,  and  the  raids  carried  out  at  his  instance  upon 
these  dwellers  in  the  "Tenderloin,"  —  the  name  given  to  the 
disreputable  part  of  Broadway,  —  attests  that  the  harsh,  reform 
ing  spirit  of  ancient  times  is  not  yet  dead.  It  suffices  to  prove 
that  the  easy  Parisian  custom  of  accepting,  while  ridiculing,  the 
triple  family  alliance,  is  not  yet  that  of  the  United  States. 

The  second  reason  is  less  historic  and  less  ideal.  It  inheres 
in  that  extraordinary  facility  of  divorce  which  rigid  moralists 
groan  over.  If  they  are  right  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
greatest  good,  they  are  surely  wrong  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  least  evil.  Here,  again,  the  Americans  have  obeyed  their 
instinct  for  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  are  guided  by 
facts,  which  they  admit  without  discussing  them.  They  start 
out  from  this  perfectly  simple  idea,  which,  however,  our  Latin 
minds  have  not  yet  admitted,  that  divorce  offers  no  menace  to 
happy  unions,  and  that  it  is  greatly  to  public  and  private  interest 
that  the  more  quickly  and  easily  the  unhappy  ones  are  broken 
the  better. 

This  ground  taken,  there  was  as  it  were  a  rivalry  between 
the  States  as  to  which  should  do  most  to  facilitate  divorce. 
It  is  a  standing  joke,  that  the  brakemen  used  to  cry,  at  the 
stations  in  Chicago,  "  Twenty  minutes'  stop  for  divorce  !  "  It 
is  a  truthful  charge  that  in  certain  Western  codes  the  rupture 
of  the  marriage  tie  is  not  much  more  complicated  than  the 
purchase  of  a  piece  of  ground.  In  most  of  them  a  six  months' 
residence  enables  you  to  take  advantage  of  their  divorce  laws ; 
in  a  few,  North  Dakota  for  example,  ninety  days  are  enough. 

Intemperance,  a  sentence  to  prison  for  two  years,  voluntary 
absence  for  one  year,  adhesion  to  an  adverse  religious  sect,  on 
the  part  of  either  husband  or  wife,  —  these  are  a  few  of  the 
grounds  of  divorce  which  I  select  at  random  from  the  various 
articles  of  these  codes.  Not  a  week  passes  but  you  may  read 

in  the  papers  that  Mr.  X or  Mrs.  Z has  gone  to  such 

or  such  a  State  to  pass  the  time  necessary  to  establish  a  resi- 


SOCIETY  103 

dence,  after  which  they  will  be  free  to  return  to  their  former 
condition  and  form  new  ties.  These  villegiatures  for  the  purpose 
of  divorce  are  among  the  gayeties  of  the  more  advanced  spirits. 

"  I  used  to  know  Mrs.  V well,"  said  a  Washington  girl  to 

me.  "  When  we  had  a  box  in  the  New  York  Opera,  we  were 
always  meeting  on  the  train.  It  was  just  the  time  when  she 
was  going  every  week,  for  a  few  days,  to  the  house  in  Dela 
ware  that  she  had  hired  for  her  divorce  !  " 

From  this  facility  of  freedom  from  ill-advised  bonds,  it 
results  that  those  unions  which  remain  appear  to  be  highly 
irreproachable,  as  do  also  those  which  are  made  after  the  rup 
ture  of  a  first  marriage.  There  is,  indeed,  no  reason  why  an 
ill-assorted  union  should  continue.  This  is  not  ideal,  to  be 
sure ;  but  when  you  look  carefully  into  it,  you  come  at  last  to 
the  conclusion  that  this  flexible  legislation  does  not  create 
an  unwholesome  social  system.  Men  and  women  become 
accustomed  frankly  and  openly  to  start  over  again  when  they 
have  made  a  mistake,  and  that  is  always  better  than  the 
organized  falsehood  so  common  with  us,  which  equally  de 
grades  husband,  wife,  and  lover.  But  perhaps  all  three  of 
them  would  find  the  solution  offered  by  the  United  States 
cruelly  inconvenient  in  its  so-called  convenience. 

With  the  door  to  liberty  thus  ajar,  ready  to  fly  open  at  a 
push,  how  shall  the  young  wife,  so  developed,  so  sufficient  to 
herself,  so  energetically  trained  both  to  will  and  to  do,  how 
shall  she  submit  herself  to  the  moulding  influences  of  the 
companion  whom  marriage  has  given  her?  She  was  inde 
pendent  before;  she  is  independent  still.  I  mean,  thinking 
for  herself,  directing  her  life  according  to  her  own  ideas,  and 
continuing  her  self-development  with  the  same  determination 
that  was  hers  before,  without  letting  herself  be  moulded  under 
the  imprint  and  according  to  the  ideas  of  her  partner.  That 
is  the  true  epithet  for  marriage,  —  not  indeed  always,  but  very 
often.  It  is  a  social  partnership,  to  which  the  man  brings  for 


104  OUTRE-MER 

capital  his  labor  and  his  money,  and  the  woman  her  beauty, 
her  art  of  dress,  and  her  social  talents. 

Then  come  the  children,  who,  with  us,  are  the  vital  question 
of  a  household,  its  final  reunion,  its  salvation.  It  is  not  thus  on 
Anglo-Saxon  soil.  The  idolatry  of  father  and  mother,  which 
are  the  key  to  the  French  family  —  its  weaknesses,  the  equal 
division  of  the  family  inheritance,  its  warmth  also  and  its  unity 
of  interest,  —  this  idolatry,  a  little  morbid  but  very  tender,  is 
replaced  in  English  and  American  countries  by  a  more  virile 
and  colder  vigilance,  which  does  not  stir  the  inner  fibres  of  the 
heart,  or  at  least  which  stirs  them  with  a  different  thrill.  My 
French  friends  of  this  part  of  the  world  are  very  severe  on  this 
point.  They  tell  me  that  the  hope  of  motherhood  is  carefully 
concealed  as  long  as  possible  by  the  young  wife,  who  blushes 
for  it  as  for  some  animal  function  almost  humiliating  and  to  be 
concealed.  They  repeat  as  very  characteristic  the  remark  of 
an  old  lady  who,  when  told  that  one  of  her  young  friends  had 
just  given  birth  to  twins,  exclaimed  :  — 

"  How  vulgar  !  " 

They  tell  me  of  this  and  that  society  woman  who  has  spent 
ten  months  on  a  stretch  in  Europe,  without  distressing  herself 
about  her  children,  left  to  the  care  of  relatives  or  friends.  I  do 
not  know  whether  such  desertions  are  the  exception  or  the 
rule,  and  in  any  case  I  put  little  faith  in  anecdotes.  In  history 
they  are  all  false,  in  literature  all  calumnious,  and  where  social 
life  is  in  question  they  are  almost  all  exaggerated,  without  those 
shades  of  individuality  which  explain  the  anomalous  or  those 
circumstances  which  justify  it.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
believe  in  statistics,  and  those  of  divorce  appear  to  me  more 
conclusive.  Fathers  and  mothers  who  are  not  brought  together 
by  their  children  cannot  love  them  much,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  the  direct  education  of  the  child  by  its  father  and 
mother  were  more  frequent,  the  independence  of  the  young 
man  and  the  young  girl  would  not  be  what  it  is. 


SOCIETY  105 

As  the  American  marriage  appears  to  be  above  all  a  partner 
ship,  so  the  American  family  appears  to  be  more  than  anything 
else  an  association,  —  a  sort  of  social  camp,  the  ties  of  which 
are  more  or  less  strong  according  to  individual  sympathies, 
such  as  might  exist  between  people  not  of  the  same  blood.  I 
am  certain,  not  from  anecdotes  but  from  experience,  that  the 
friendship  of  brother  and  brother,  or  sister  and  sister,  is  entirely 
elective.  So  it  is  with  the  relations  between  father  and  son, 
mother  and  daughter.  A  young  Frenchman  much  in  love  with 
a  New  York  girl  said  to  me  in  one  of  those  moments  when 
the  coldness  of  the  woman  you  love  drives  you  to  be  cruelly 
frank :  — 

"She  has  so  little  heart  that  she  went  to  the  theatre  five 
weeks  after  her  mother's  death,  and  no  one  resented  it." 

I  knew  that  he  was  telling  the  truth.  But  what  did  it  prove  ? 
What  do  the  inequalities  permitted  by  the  laws  of  inheritance 
prove?  Nothing  if  not  that  our  natural  characteristics,  in 
stincts,  sensibilities,  are  not  the  same  as  those  of  the  people  of 
this  country.  They  have  much  less  power  of  self-giving,  much 
more  of  personal  reaction ;  and  especially  a  much  stronger  will. 
Their  will  rules  their  hearts  as  well  as  their  minds.  This  seems 
to  us  less  tender.  But  are  we  good  judges? 

We  must  continually  keep  in  mind  this  general  want  of 
association  in  family  life  if  we  would  in  any  degree  understand 
the  sort  of  soul  celibacy,  if  we  may  use  the  term,  which  the 
American  woman  keeps  all  through  her  married  life.  No 
more  in  this  second  period  of  her  life  than  in  the  first,  does 
love  bear  that  preponderating  part  which  seems  to  us  French 
men  an  essential  characteristic  of  the  lot  of  woman.  When 
a  Parisian  woman  of  forty  reviews  her  life,  the  story  that  mem 
ory  tells  her  is  the  story  of  her  emotions.  To  an  American 
woman  of  the  same  age,  it  is  more  often  the  story  of  her 
actions,  of  what  she  calls,  by  a  word  I  have  before  cited,  her 


106  OUTRE-MER 

experiences.  She  gained,  between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and 
twenty-five,  a  conception  of  her  own  self,  which  was  imposed 
upon  her  neither  by  her  traditions  —  she  has  none — nor  by 
the  instructions  of  her  parents  —  they  never  gave  her  any  — 
nor  even  by  her  own  nature ;  for  it  is  characteristic  of  these 
easily  "  adaptable  "  minds  that  their  first  instincts  are  chaotic 
and  undetermined.  They  are  like  a  blank  check,  which  the 
will  undertakes  to  fill  out.  But,  whatever  the  will  writes  upon 
it  is  written  in  letters  that  will  never  be  effaced.  Action, 
action,  always  action,  —  this  is  the  remorseless,  but  unchanging, 
devise  of  such  a  woman.  Whether  she  seeks  for  a  place  in 
society,  or  is  ambitious  for  artistic  culture,  or  addicts  herself  to 
sport,  or  organizes  "  classes,"  as  they  say,  for  reading  Browning, 
Emerson,  or  Shakespeare  with  her  friends,  whether  she  travels 
to  Europe,  India,  or  Japan,  or  remains  at  home  to  have  some 
young  girl  among  her  friends  "  pour  "  tea  for  her,  be  sure  that 
she  will  be  always  and  incessantly  active,  indefatigably  active, 
either  in  the  lines  of  "  refinement  "  or  of  "  excitement." 

With  what  impressiveness  these  women  utter  both  these 
words,  which  we  must  not  weary  of  returning  to ;  for  they,  per 
haps,  sum  up  the  entire  American  soul.  They  are  bandied 
about  in  conversation  like  two  formulae,  in  which  are  revealed 
the  persistence  of  this  creature,  which,  born  of  a  stern  race, 
and  feeling  herself  fine,  wills  to  become  finer  and  ever  finer ; 
who,  reared  amid  democratic  surroundings,  wills  to  become 
distinguished  and  ever  more  distinguished ;  who,  daughter  of 
a  land  of  enterprise,  loves  to  excite  continually  in  herself  the 
sensation  of  overstrained  nerves. 

When  you  see  ten,  fifteen,  thirty,  fifty  like  this,  the  character 
of  eccentricity  which  you  first  found  in  them  by  comparison 
with  the  women  of  Europe,  disappears.  A  new  type  of  feminine 
seduction  is  revealed  to  you,  less  affecting  than  irritating,  enig 
matic  and  slightly  ambiguous  by  its  indefinable  blending  of 
supple  grace  and  virile  firmness,  by  the  alliance  of  culture  and 


SOCIETY  107 

vigor,  by  the  most  thrilling  nervous  sensitiveness  and  the  stur 
diest  health.  The  true  place  of  such  a  creature  in  this  society 
appears  to  you  also,  and  the  profound  reason  why  these  men, 
themselves  all  action,  leave  these  women  free  thus  to  act  with 
total  independence.  If  it  is  permitted  to  apply  an  old  legal 
term  to  creatures  so  subtle,  so  delicate,  these  women  are 
the  delegates  to  luxury  in  this  utilitarian  civilization.  Their 
mission  is  to  bring  into  it  that  which  the  American  has  not  time 
to  create  and  which  he  desires  to  have  :  The  flower  of  elegance, 
something  of  beauty,  and,  in  a  word,  of  aristocracy.  They  are 
the  nobility  in  this  land  of  business,  a  nobility  developed  by  the 
very  development  of  business,  since  the  money  which  is  made 
in  the  offices  comes  at  last  to  them,  and  manipulated  by  their 
ringers  is  transfigured,  blossoming  into  precious  decorations, 
made  intellectual  in  plays  of  fancy,  —  in  fact,  unutilized. 

A  great  artist,  foremost  of  this  epoch  by  the  ardor  of  his 
efforts,  the  conscientiousness  of  his  study,  and  the  sincerity  of 
his  vision,  John  Sargent,  has  shown  what  I  have  tried  to  ex 
press,  in  a  portrait  which  I  saw  in  an  exhibition,  —  that  of  a 
woman  whose  name  I  do  not  know.  It  is  a  portrait  such  as 
the  fifteenth-century  masters  painted,  who,  back  of  the  indi 
vidual  found  the  real,  and  back  of  the  model  a  whole  social 
order.  The  canvas  might  be  called  "The  American  Idol,"  so 
representative  is  it. 

The  woman  is  standing,  her  feet  side  by  side,  her  knees 
close  together,  in  an  almost  hieratic  pose.  Her  body,  ren 
dered  supple  by  exercise,  is  sheathed  —  you  might  say  moulded 
—  in  a  tight-fitting  black  dress.  Rubies,  like  drops  of  blood, 
sparkle  on  her  shoes.  Her  slender  waist  is  encircled  by  a 
girdle  of  enormous  pearls,  and  from  this  dress,  which  makes 
an  intensely  dark  background  for  the  stony  brilliance  of  the 
jewels,  the  arms  and  shoulders  shine  out  with  another  bril 
liance,  that  of  a  flower-like  flesh, —  fine,  white  flesh,  through 


108  OUTRE-MER 

which  flows  blood  perpetually  invigorated  by  the  air  of  the 
country  and  the  ocean.  The  head,  intellectual  and  daring, 
with  a  countenance  as  of  one  who  has  understood  everything, 
has,  for  a  sort  of  aureole,  the  vaguely  gilded  design  of  one  of 
those  Renascence  stuffs  which  the  Venetians  call  sopra-risso. 
The  rounded  arms,  in  which  the  muscles  can  hardly  be  seen, 
are  joined  by  the  clasped  hands, —  firm  hands,  the  thumb 
almost  too  long,  which  might  guide  four  horses  with  the  pre 
cision  of  an  English  coachman.  It  is  the  picture  of  an  energy 
at  once  delicate  and  invincible,  momentarily  in  repose,  and 
all  the  Byzantine  Madonna  is  in  that  face,  with  its  wide-open 
eyes. 

Yes,  this  woman  is  an  idol,  for  whose  service  man  labors, 
which  he  has  decked  with  the  jewels  of  a  queen,  behind  each 
one  of  whose  whims  lie  days  and  days  spent  in  the  ardent 
battle  of  Wall  Street.  Frenzy  of  speculations  in  land,  cities 
undertaken  and  built  by  sheer  force  of  millions,  trains  launched 
at  full  speed  over  bridges  built  on  a  Babel  like  sweep  of 
arch,  the  creaking  of  cable  cars,  the  quivering  of  electric 
cars,  sliding  along  their  wires  with  a  crackle  and  a  spark,  the 
dizzy  ascent  of  elevators,  in  buildings  twenty  stories  high, 
immense  wheat-fields  of  the  West,  its  ranches,  mines,  colos 
sal  slaughter-houses, —  all  the  formidable  traffic  of  this  coun 
try  of  effort  and  struggle,  all  its  labor, —  these  are  what  have 
made  possible  this  woman,  this  living  orchid,  unexpected 
masterpiece  of  this  civilization. 

Did  not  the  very  painter  consecrate  to  her  his  intense  toil? 
To  be  capable  of  such  a  picture,  he  must  have  absorbed  some 
of  the  ardor  of  the  Spanish  masters,  caught  the  subtlety  of  the 
great  Italians,  understood  and  practised  the  curiosities  of 
impressionism,  dreamed  before  the  pictures  in  basilicas  like 
Ravenna,  and  read  and  thought.  Ah,  how  much  of  culture, 
of  reflection,  before  one  could  fathom  the  secret  depths  of 
one's  own  race.  He  has  expressed  one  of  the  most  essential 


SOCIETY  109 

characteristics  of  the  race,  —  the  deification  of  woman,  con 
sidered  not  as  a  Beatrice  as  in  Florence,  nor  as  a  courtesan  as 
at  Milan,  but  as  a  supreme  glory  of  the  national  spirit.  This 
woman  can  do  without  being  loved.  She  has  no  need  of 
being  loved.  What  she  symbolizes  is  neither  sensuality  nor 
tenderness.  She  is  like  a  living  object  of  art,  the  last  fine 
work  of  human  skill,  attesting  that  the  Yankee,  but  yesterday 
despairing,  vanquished  by  the  Old  World,  has  been  able  to 
draw  from  this  savage  world  upon  which  fate  has  cast  him  a 
wholly  new  civilization,  incarnated  in  this  woman,  her  luxury, 
and  her  pride.  Everything  is  illuminated  by  this  civiliza 
tion,  at  the  gaze  of  these  fathomless  eyes,  in  the  expression 
of  which  the  painter  has  succeeded  in  putting  all  the  idealism 
of  this  country  which  has  no  ideal;  all  that  which,  perhaps, 
will  one  day  be  its  destruction,  but  up  to  the  present  time  is 
still  its  greatness, —  a  faith  in  the  human  Will,  absolute, 
unique,  systematic,  and  indomitable. 


BUSINESS   MEN   AND   BUSINESS  SCENES 

BACK  of  the  social  and  feminine  world,  as  a  support  to  its 
independence  and  individuality,  in  America,  as  everywhere 
else,  stands  man.  But  one  feature  distinguishes  this  civiliza 
tion;  the  men  of  this  country  belong  to  a  single  category. 
In  the  United  States,  where  there  is  no  nobility,  no  squire 
archy,  almost  no  military,  no  diplomatic  corps,  and  the 
smallest  possible  administrative  body,  society,  in  both  senses 
of  the  word,  belongs  to  the  business  man,  an  immense  class, 
which  includes  the  hotel  manager  and  the  politician,  the 
former  sinking  his  eight  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  the 
furnishing  of  his  hotel,  the  latter  managing  his  own  election, 
and  adopting  or  rejecting  laws  with  the  methods  of  a  contrac 
tor.  At  the  present  time,  the  business  man  has  even  drawn 
the  rural  population  under  his  control,  and  forced  them  into 
the  whirlwind  of  his  activity,  far  apart  as  the  two  classes  are 
in  all  other  countries.  The  extent  of  the  territory,  and  the 
arrangements  for  railway  transportation  of  cattle  and  grain  in 
immense  quantities,  have  brought  them  under  the  domain  of 
companies  of  all  sorts  who,  for  their  part,  have  "under 
taken  "  to  feed  all  America. 

One  of  the  most  significant  proofs  of  this  particular  fact 
is  the  daily  disappearance  of  the  New  England  farmer,  that 
delicious  local  personage,  whose  simple  and  genuine  manners 
has  furnished  an  inexhaustible  object  for  the  studies  of  so 
many  romance  writers,  male  and  female.  Incapable  of  strug 
gling,  isolated  and  single-handed,  against  the  strong  competi- 

no 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  111 

tion  of  the  West,  these  farmers  emigrate  toward  the  prairie, 
and  you  continually  find  advertisements  in  the  newspapers, 
offering  for  sale  their  modest  homesteads,  with  descriptions 
like  the  following,  which  I  transcribe  without  changing  a  word. 

"S ,  Massachusetts.  For  sale.  A  farm  of  sixty  acres: 

mowing,  eight  acres;  pasture-land,  eighteen;  forest,  thirty 
to  forty;  tillable  ground,  twelve.  Almost  all  the  hay  crop  can 
be  cut  by  machine.  One-story  house,  five  rooms,  somewhat 
out  of  repair.  Small  barn,  in  good  condition.  Good  well, 
near  the  house,  and  running  stream  back  of  the  barn.  Twenty 
apple  trees,  twelve  fruit  trees  of  different  varieties.  Railway 

station  at  L ,  six  miles  distant;  postoffice  at  S ,  one 

mile.  Price,  four  hundred  dollars;  one  hundred  cash,  the 
balance  at  four  per  cent  interest." 

What  a  drama  of  rustic  ruin  may  be  descried  back  of  these 
modest  figures !  and  behind  the  details  of  this  humble  inven 
tory  what  a  laborious  and  almost  idyllic  existence  !  I  have 
met  analogous  conditions  far  away  in  the  South,  among  the 
survivors  of  those  colonies  of  non-slaveholding  whites,  whom 
the  blacks  contemptuously  call  "  crackers."  I  have  before  my 
eyes  as  I  write  the  picture  of  a  wooden  house  in  the  depths  of 
the  pine  forests  of  Georgia.  It  is  inhabited  by  an  old  man 
of  seventy,  with  his  daughter,  his  sons,  and  his  sons'  children; 
boys  with  legs  as  muscular  as  their  arms,  running  about  bare 
footed  among  the  horses. 

These  people  had  the  proud  courtesy  of  families  who  have 
never  known  any  superior,  having  had  neither  vanities  nor 
needs.  The  old  man  remembered  having  heard  that  his  great 
grandfather  came  from  France  —  from  Brittany,  he  thought. 
The  Christian  name  of  Rene",  handed  down  among  them,  at 
tested  to  this  far-away  origin.  Their  light  blue  eyes,  Celtic 
eyes,  shone  with  the  light  of  honor.  On  their  table  was  nothing 
which  was  not  the  product  of  the  soil  and  of  their  own  labor. 

"  We  have  everything  except  coffee  and  tobacco,"  they  said ; 


112  OUTRE-MER 

"even  wines."  And  they  produced,  with  the  pride  of  a  Rob 
inson  receiving  the  Spanish  captain,  a  pale  red  liquid,  —  grape 
juice,  sweetened  with  cane  sugar,  and  poured,  in  the  absence 
of  bottles,  into  a  tin  sauce-pan.  Cows,  goats,  pigs,  pastured 
freely  around  the  house.  The  guns,  hung  over  the  door,  had 
the  lustre  of  weapons  often  used. 

It  seemed  as  if  I  saw  before  me  the  primitive  pioneer  of  the 
sort  that  abounded  a  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  with  them  as 
with  the  bisons,  the  last  head  of  which  is  jealously  guarded  in 
the  Yellowstone  Park.  He  has  disappeared,  and  is  being  re 
placed  by  the  agricultural  laborer,  who  is  nothing  but  an  instru 
ment  in  the  hands  of  business  men,  whom,  from  one  end  of 
this  vast  country  to  the  other,  you  will  find  busily  occupied  in 
changing  and  developing  its  character.  In  the  upper  station 
they  give  it  a  peculiar  elegance  by  the  luxury  of  their  palaces 
and  villas,  their  wives  and  daughters.  In  the  lower,  they  feed 
the  nation  by  enrolling  men  in  their  service. 

"I  assert,"  said  one  of  them  the  other  day  —  Mr.  Chauncey 
Depew,  an  orator  of  the  highest  ability,  who  would  perhaps  be 
president,  if  the  democracy  of  America  did  not  set  itself  against 
this  plutocratic  system  —  "I  assert  that  a  railway  president  ren 
ders  an  enormous  service  to  the  community.  He  has  twenty 
or  thirty  thousand  men  under  him,  representing  with  their  fam 
ilies  from  one  to  two  hundred  thousand  souls ;  and  their  wel 
fare,  not  physical  only,  but  mental,  social,  and  moral,  depends 
almost  absolutely  upon  him." 

A  packing  business  like  that  of  Armour  in  Chicago,  for 
example,  furnishes  daily  employment  to  eleven  thousand  em 
ployees.  The  generalissimo  of  this  industrial  army  is  often  a 
man  who  at  twenty  years  old  was  living  in  a  "  lean-to,"  that  is, 
a  hut  of  planks  leaning  up  against  a  rock  or  a  wall.  He  is  not 
forty  years  old  and  he  is  "  worth  "  five  millions  of  dollars.  In 
a  few  years  more  he  will  be  worth  ten,  fifteen,  and  so  on,  till 
he  dies  of  heart  disease  in  his  yacht  cabin,  or  his  private  car, 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  113 

father-in-law  of  a  lord  or  grandfather  of  young  Italian  princes ; 
but  under  his  nickname  of  Jim,  Tom,  or  Billy,  familiarly  re 
gretted  or  cursed  by  his  workmen  according  as  he  has  made 
himself  loved  or  hated  by  them. 

This  is  a  truly  new  type  of  personage,  impossible  to  find  any 
where  else,  and  whom  one  must  picture  to  oneself  from  small 
to  great,  —  for  the  series  is  infinite,  —  in  order  really  to  under 
stand  what  there  is  most  original  in  this  strange  people.  In 
the  vigorous  natures  of  these  business  men  there  is  a  vein  of 
technical  genius  which  no  observer,  however  penetrating  or 
imaginative,  would  hardly  have  expected. 

They  tell  me  that  another  portrait  painter  —  for  the  Ameri 
cans  have  an  extravagant  passion  for  portraits  and  busts  — 
was  commissioned  last  year  to  paint  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
of  Wall  Street  speculators.  Despairing  of  ever  obtaining  a  sat 
isfactory  sitting,  so  full  of  business  were  his  model's  hours,  the 
painter  finally  took  his  material  to  the  business  office  of  this 
gentleman,  whom  he  painted  in  his  characteristic  attitude,  with 
the  paper  strip  of  the  "  ticker  "  in  his  hand,  upon  which  second 
by  second  were  automatically  inscribed  the  fluctuations  in  the 
value  of  stocks.  It  was  an  accurate  symbol  of  what  we  men 
of  art,  or  of  abstract  thought,  succeed  in  getting  when  we  study 
one  of  these  builders  of  enormous  fortunes.  We  see  a  gesture, 
an  absorbed  countenance,  the  tension  of  a  prodigious  energy,  and 
that  is  all.  What  the  manipulator  of  money  feels  while  looking 
at  his  figures,  the  particular  action  of  a  mind  of  this  quality  in 
travail  of  combinations,  why  one  triumphs  and  another  conies 
to  shipwreck,  are  all  problems  which  so  far  remain  insoluble. 

I  have  just  mentioned  the  name  of  Mr.  Chauncey  Depew. 
In  a  collection  of  his  speeches,  published  this  very  year,  I 
find  a  singular  expression  on  the  "  unequalled  genius  "  of  the 
first  Vanderbilt,  the  celebrated  Commodore.  The  few  instances 
which  the  orator  brings  to  his  support  of  his  assertion  manifest, 
indeed,  such  a  superiority  that  no  one  thinks  of  being  surprised 


114  OUTRE-MER 

at  the  epithet.  We  admit  with  the  speaker,  that  an  intellectual 
force  has  been  at  work  there,  as  remarkable  as  that  which  wins 
battles,  governs  Parliaments,  makes  or  unmakes  treaties.  But 
he  understands  this  force,  because  he  has  worked  beside  it, 
under  it,  with  it.  To  us  who  have  not  done  so,  who  cannot 
have  that  practical  vision,  his  professional  talent  remains  unde- 
fmable  and  unattainable. 

A  single  resource  is  left  us  :  to  gaze  with  all  our  powers, 
through  the  ideas  awakened  by  the  sight,  upon  the  work  pro 
duced  by  these  business  men,  the  scene  amid  which  their 
activities  are  carried  on,  the  plans  which  they  executed ;  and 
venture  a  few  conjectures  upon  the  sort  of  human  nature  which 
this  work,  this  setting,  these  plans,  must  take  for  granted.  Many 
a  time  in  the  course  of  this  journey  I  have  tried  this  experi 
ment,  particularly  in  a  too  short  Western  trip,  or  at  least  to 
what  was  lately  the  West,  Chicago,  St.  Paul,  Minneapolis ;  for 
every  five  years  the  frontier  of  civilization  draws  farther  west 
ward,  and  the  time  is  approaching  when  the  people  of  Colorado 
will  be  offended  at  not  being  considered  Eastern  people  !  What 
does  it  all  matter  —  East,  West  ?  These  are  but  words.  The 
prodigious  reality  is  the  growth  of  the  three  cities  whose  names 
I  have  just  written,  the  added  ages  of  which  do  not  amount 
to  more  than  a  century  and  a  half!  When  you  reflect  that 
behind  this  inordinate  growth,  this  almost  instantaneous  pas 
sage  from  a  desert  to  a  city  of  two  hundred  thousand,  five  hun 
dred  thousand,  eight  hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  one  always 
comes  face  to  face  with  the  energy  of  the  business  man,  the 
prejudices  of  the  man  of  letters  cease  to  influence  you.  1 
hope  that  there  will  not  be  too  many  traces  of  it  in  these 
sketches  taken  from  my  journal,  and  the  two  or  three  psycho 
logical  theories  which  they  comment  upon. 

Chicago  in  an  autumn  morning  from  the  tower  of  the 
Auditorium.  —  It  is  two  hundred  and  seventy  feet  high,  and 


BUSINESS   MEN   AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  115 

it  crowns  and  dominates  a  chaotic  cyclopean  structure  which 
connects  a  colossal  hotel  with  a  colossal  theatre.  One's 
first  visit  on  arriving  should  be  here,  in  order  to  get  the 
strongest  impression  of  the  enormous  city,  lying  black  on  the 
shore  of  its  blue  lake. 

Last  night,  when  the  conductor  called  out  the  name  of  the 
station  at  which  I  was  to  leave  the  train,  a  frightful  storm, 
such  as  one  experiences  nowhere  but  in  America,  was  delug 
ing  the  whole  country  with  cataracts  of  water,  and  between 
the  station  and  the  hotel  I  could  see  nothing  but  the  outlines 
of  gigantic  buildings  hanging,  as  it  were,  from  a  dark  sky 
streaked  with  lightning,  and  between  them  small  wooden 
houses,  so  frail  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  furious  wind  must 
scatter  their  ruins  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  tempest-tossed 
city. 

This  morning  the  sky  is  clear,  with  a  soft,  warm  clearness, 
washed  clean  by  the  rain.  It  brings  out  all  the  more  strikingly 
the  dark  coloring  of  the  city,  as  it  is  reflected  back  from  the 
deeper  azure  of  Lake  Michigan,  ploughed  with  steamboats 
like  a  sea.  Far  as  the  eye  can  reach  Chicago  stretches  away, 
its  flat  roofs  and  its  smoke  —  innumerable  columns  of  whitey- 
gray  smoke.  They  rise  straight  upward,  then  stoop  to  heap 
themselves*  into  vapory  capitals,  and  at  last  meet  together  in 
a  dome  above  the  endless  avenues. 

It  needs  but  a  few  minutes  for  the  eyes  to  become  accus 
tomed  to  the  strange  scene.  Then  you  discern  differences  of 
height  among  these  levels.  Those  of  only  six  or  seven  stories 
seem  to  be  the  merest  cottages,  those  of  two  stories  are  not 
to  be  distinguished  from  the  pavement,  while  the  "buildings" 
of  fourteen,  fifteen,  twenty  stories,  uprise  like  the  islands 
of  the  Cyclades  as  seen  from  the  mountains  of  Negroponte. 

A  mighty  murmur  uprises  from  below  like  that  of  no  other 
city.  There  is  an  incessant  tinkle  of  locomotive  bells,  that 
seem  to  be  sounding  in  advance  the  knell  of  those  they  are 


116  OUTRE-MER 

about  to  crush.  They  are  everywhere,  crossing  the  streets, 
following  the  lake  shore,  passing  over  the  river  which  rolls  its 
leaden  waters  under  soot-colored  bridges,  meeting  and  cross 
ing  each  other's  tracks,  pursuing  and  overtaking  one  another. 
Now  you  distinguish  an  elevated  road,  and  there,  beside  the 
railways  on  the  level  of  the  street,  you  see  other  trains  on  the 
avenues,  three  or  four  cars  long,  but  without  locomotive.  It 
is  the  cable  system.  And  there  are  steamers  lowering  their 
yards  and  coming  to  anchor  in  the  harbor. 

Yes,  the  scene  is  strange  even  to  unreality,  when  one  re 
minds  oneself  that  this  Babel  of  industry  grew  out  of  a  tiny 
frontier  post, — Fort  Dearborn.  The  Indians  surprised  it  and 
massacred  the  garrison  about  1812.  I  am  not  very  far  beyond 
my  youth,  and  yet  how  many  men  have  I  known  that  were 
alive  then,  and  how  near  that  date  is!  In  1871,  that  is  to 
say,  later  than  the  Franco -Prussian  War,  there  was  fire  writh 
ing  around  this  very  place  where  I  am  standing  this  bright 
morning.  The  irresistible  devouring  force  of  one  of  the  most 
terrific  conflagrations  mentioned  in  history  transformed  this 
entire  plain  into  a  burning  mass  which  still  smoked  after  many 
days  had  passed. 

"Where  this  tower  now  stands,"  said  my  Chicago  guide, 
concluding  the  epos  of  that  awful  event,  "you  might  have 
stood  in  a  bed  of  ashes,  with  not  a  single  house  between  the 
lake  on  your  right  hand  and  the  river  on  your  left."  . 

I  looked  from  one  to  the  other,  the  river  and  the  lake,  as  I 
heard  these  words.  That  month  of  October,  1871,  was  more 
than  near  to  me ;  it  seemed  as  if  I  could  touch  it,  as  if  I  were 
still  in  it.  I  could  tell  the  names  of  the  books  that  I  was 
reading  then,  the  articles  that  I  was  writing.  I  could  remem 
ber  how  I  spent  almost  every  day.  I  realized  with  an  almost 
physical  accuracy  the  length  of  the  years  since  that  date,  — 
twenty-two.  How  few  hours  that  makes,  after  all !  and  I 
leaned  again  over  the  balustrade  of  the  tower,  gazing  down 


BUSINESS   MEN   AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  117 

upon  this  prodigy,  stunned  with  the  thought  of  what  men  have 
done ! 

Men  !  The  word  is  hardly  correct  applied  to  this  perplexing 
city.  When  you  study  it  more  in  detail,  its  aspect  reveals  so 
little  of  the  personal  will,  so  little  caprice  and  individuality,  in 
its  streets  and  buildings,  that  it  seems  like  the  work  of  some 
impersonal  power,  irresistible,  unconscious,  like  a  force  of 
nature,  in  whose  service  man  was  merely  a  passive  instrument. 

This  power  is  nothing  else  than  that  business  fever  which 
here  throbs  at  will,  with  an  unbridled  violence  like  that  of  an 
uncontrollable  element.  It  rushes  along  these  streets,  as  once 
before  the  devouring  flame  of  fire ;  it  quivers ;  it  makes  itself 
visible  with  an  intensity  which  lends  something  tragical  to  this 
city,  and  makes  it  seem  like  a  poem  to  me. 

When,  from  this  overhanging  tower,  you  have  gazed  down 
upon  this  immense  volcano  of  industry  and  commerce,  you  go 
down  to  look  more  closely  into  the  details  of  this  exuberant 
life,  this  exhaustless  stream  of  activity.  You  walk  along  the 
sidewalks  of  streets  which  bear  marks  of  haste,  —  here  flag 
stones,  there  asphalt,  yonder  a  mere  line  of  planks  crossing 
a  miry  swamp.  This  want  of  continuity  in  road  material  is 
repeated  in  the  buildings.  At  one  moment  you  have  nothing 
around  you  but  "  buildings."  They  scale  the  very  heavens 
with  their  eighteen  and  twenty  stories.  The  architect  who  built 
them,  or,  rather,  made  them  by  machinery,  gave  up  all  thought 
of  colonnades,  mouldings,  classical  decorations.  He  ruthlessly 
accepted  the  speculator's  inspired  conditions,  —  to  multiply  as 
much  as  possible  the  value  of  the  bit  of  earth  at  the  base  by 
multiplying  the  superimposed  "  offices." 

One  might  think  that  such  a  problem  would  interest  no  one 
but  an  engineer.  Nothing  of  the  kind  !  The  simple  power 
of  necessity  is  to  a  certain  degree  a  principle  of  beauty ;  and 
these  structures  so  plainly  manifest  this  necessity  that  you  feel  a 
strange  emotion  in  contemplating  them.  It  is  the  first  draught  of 


118  OUTRE-MER 

a  new  sort  of  art,  —  an  art  of  democracy  made  by  the  masses 
and  for  the  masses,  an  art  of  science,  where  the  invariability  of 
natural  laws  gives  to  the  most  unbridled  daring  the  calmness 
of  geometrical  figures.  The  portals  of  the  basements,  usually 
arched  as  if  crushed  beneath  the  weight  of  the  mountain  which 
they  support,  look  like  dens  of  a  primitive  race,  continually 
receiving  and  pouring  forth  a  stream  of  people.  You  lift  your 
eyes,  and  you  feel  that  up  there  behind  the  perpendicular  wall, 
with  its  innumerable  windows,  is  a  multitude  coming  and  going, 
—  crowding  the  offices  that  perforate  these  cliffs  of  brick  and 
iron,  dizzied  with  the  speed  of  the  elevators.  You  divine,  you 
feel  the  hot  breath  of  speculation  quivering  behind  these  win 
dows.  This  it  is  which  has  fecundated  these  thousands  of 
square  feet  of  earth,  in  order  that  from  them  may  spring  up 
this  appalling  growth  of  business  palaces,  that  hide  the  sun 
from  you  and  almost  shut  out  the  light  of  day. 

Close  beside  the  preposterous,  Babel-like  building  extends  a 
shapeless  bit  of  ground,  undefined,  bristling,  green  with  a  scanty 
turf,  on  which  a  lean  cow  is  feeding.  Then  follows  a  succes 
sion  of  little  wooden  houses,  hardly  large  enough  for  a  single 
family.  Next  comes  a  Gothic  church,  transformed  into  a  shop, 
with  a  sign  in  great  metal  characters.  Then  comes  the  red  and 
pretentious  ruin  of  some  other  building  burned  the  other  week. 
Vacant  lots,  shanties,  churches,  ruins,  —  speculation  will  sweep 
over  it  all  to-morrow,  this  evening  perhaps,  and  other  "buildings  " 
will  spring  up.  But  time  is  needed,  and  these  people  have 
none.  These  two  years  past,  instead  of  completing  their  half- 
finished  city,  they  have  been  amusing  themselves  in  building 
another  over  yonder,  under  pretext  of  their  exhibition.  It  is 
entirely  white,  a  dream  city,  with  domes  like  those  of  Ravenna, 
colonnades  like  those  at  Rome,  lagoons  like  Venice,  a  fair  of  the 
world  like  Paris. 

They  have  succeeded,  and  now  the  most  composite,  the 
most  cosmopolitan  of  human  mixtures  fill  these  suburban  and 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  119 

elevated  railways,  these  cable  cars,  coaches,  carriages,  which  over 
flow  upon  these  unfinished  sidewalks  before  these  wildly  dissim 
ilar  houses.  And  as  at  Chicago,  it  seems  that  everything  and 
everybody  must  be  larger,  more  developed,  stronger,  so  from 
block  to  block  in  the  middle  of  these  streets  are  posted,  to 
maintain  order,  enormous  mounted  policemen,  tall  as  Pome 
ranian  grenadiers  ;  gigantic  human  barriers  against  which  break 
the  seething  eddies  of  this  multitude.  Most  of  them  are  Ger 
mans  ;  their  red  faces  are  unformed  as  if  hewn  out  with  a 
hatchet,  as  if  hastily  blocked  out,  and  their  bullock-like  necks 
and  shoulders  make  a  striking  comment  on  divers  facts  of  the 
daily  papers,  which  continually  tell  of  some  "  hands  up " 
performed  in  the  taverns,  the  gambling-houses,  or  simply  in  a 
carriage,  or  on  the  tramway. 

"  Hands  up !  "  It  is  the  classic  command  of  the  Western 
robber,  as  he  enters,  revolver  in  hand,  his  first  business  to 
make  sure  that  you  have  not  yours.  How  many  times  has  it 
been  uttered  in  the  suburbs  of  this  city,  the  meeting-place  of 
the  adventurers  of  the  two  worlds?  How  many  times  will  it 
yet  be  uttered?  But  the  spirit  of  adventure  is  also  the  spirit 
of  enterprise,  and  if  the  size  of  the  policemen  of  this  surpris 
ing  city  attests  the  frequency  of  surprises  attempted  by  these 
ruffians,  it  completes  its  complex  physiognomy;  different, 
surely,  from  every  other  since  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
a  mosaic  of  extreme  civilization  and  almost  barbarism,  a 
savage  existence  only  part  discerned  through  the  abruptness 
of  this  industrial  creation.  In  short,  it  is  Chicago,  a  mira 
cle  that  would  confound  the  dead  of  seventy  years  ago,  if  they 
were  to  return  to  earth  and  find  themselves  in  this  city,  now 
the  ninth  in  the  world  as  to  population,  which  when  they 
were  alive  had  not  a  single  house. 

One  of  the  enormous  branches  of  traffic  of  this  city  is  in 
meat.  The  Chicago  folk  are  a  little  ashamed  of  it.  In  earlier 


120  OUTRE-MER 

days  they  would  talk  to  you  of  their  packing-houses,  with  that 
artless  pride  which  is  one  of  the  charms  of  great  parvenus. 
It  is  the  simplicity  natural  to  an  elemental  strength,  which 
knows  itself  strong  and  loves  to  exercise  itself  frankly.  They 
are  tired  now  of  hearing  their  detractors  call  them  the  inhabi 
tants  of  Porkopolis.  They  find  it  a  grievance  that  their  city 
is  always  "identified,"  as  they  say  here,  with  that  brutal 
butchery,  when  it  has  among  its  publishing  houses  one  of  the 
vastest  marts  of  books  in  the  world,  when  its  newspapers  never 
let  any  incident  of  literature  or  art  pass  without  investigating 
it,  when  it  has  founded  a  university  at  a  cost  of  seven  mil 
lions  of  dollars,  when  it  has  just  gathered  together  representa 
tives  of  all  forms  of  belief,  at  its  remarkable  Parliament  of 
Religions, —  a  phenomenon  unique  in  the  history  of  human 
idealism!  Chicago  aspires  to  be  something  more  than  the 
distributor  of  food,  although  last  year  a  single  one  of  its  firms 
cut  up  and  distributed  one  million  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  hogs,  a  million  and  twenty-five  thousand  beeves,  and 
six  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  sheep.  Its  enemies 
seek  to  crush  it  under  figures  like  these,  omitting  to  remem 
ber  that  the  Chicago  of  the  abattoirs  is  also  the  Chicago  of 
the  "White  City,"  the  Chicago  of  a  museum  which  is  already 
incomparable,  the  Chicago  which  gave  Lincoln  to  the  United 
States. 

On  the  other  hand,  these  abattoirs  furnish  material  most 
precious  to  the  foreigner  who  desires  to  understand  the  spirit 
in  which  the  Americans  undertake  their  great  enterprises. 
A  slaughter-house  capable  of  shipping  in  twelve  months,  to 
the  four  parts  of  this  immense  continent,  three  millions  five 
hundred  thousand  dressed  cattle  is  worth  the  trouble  of  inves 
tigating.  Everywhere  else  the  technical  details  are  very  diffi 
cult  to  grasp.  They  are  less  so  here,  the  directors  of  these 
colossal  manufactories  of  roast  beef  and  hams  having  discov 
ered  that  the  best  possible  advertisement  is  to  admit  the 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND  BUSINESS   SCENES  121 

public  to  witness  their  processes  of  working.  They  have 
made  a  visit  to  their  establishments,  if  not  attractive, —  physi 
cal  repulsion  is  too  strong  for  that, —  at  least  convenient  and 
thorough.  On  condition  of  having  your  nerves  wrung  once 
for  all,  these  are  among  the  places  where  you  shall  best  see 
how  American  ingenuity  solves  the  problems  of  a  prodigiously 
complicated  organization. 

I  therefore  did  like  other  unprejudiced  tourists,  and  visited 
the  "stock  yards  "  and  the  most  celebrated  among  the  "pack 
ing-houses,"  as  they  are  called, —  cutting-up  houses,  rather, — 
which  is  here  in  operation;  the  one,  indeed,  the  statistics  of 
whose  operations  I  have  but  now  quoted.  This  walk  through 
that  house  of  blood  will  always  remain  to  me  one  of  the  most 
singular  memories  of  my  journey.  I  think,  however,  that 
I  owe  to  it  a  better  discernment  of  the  characteristic  features 
of  an  American  business  concern.  If  this  is  so,  I  shall  have 
no  reason  to  regret  the  painful  experience. 

To  reach  the  "Union  Stock  Yards,"  the  carriage  crosses  an 
immense  section  of  the  city,  even  more  incoherent  than  those 
which  border  on  the  elegant  Michigan  Avenue.  It  stops 
before  the  railways,  to  permit  the  passage  of  trains  running 
at  full  speed.  It  crosses  bridges,  which  immediately  after 
uprear  themselves  to  permit  the  passage  of  boats.  It  passes 
by  hotels  which  are  palaces,  and  laborers'  houses  which  are 
hovels.  It  skirts  large  plots  of  ground,  where  market-gar 
deners  are  cultivating  cabbages  amongst  heaps  of  refuse,  and 
others  which  bear  nothing  but  advertisements.  How  shall  I 
deny  myself  the  pleasure  of  copying  this  one,  among  a  hundred 
others :  — 

"  Louis  XIV.  was  crowned  King  of  France  at  the  age  of  five 

years  (1643).  X 's  pepsin  had  been  crowned  with  success 

as  a  remedy  for  indigestion  before  it  had  been  publicly  known 
a  single  year." 


122  OUTRE-MER 

The  advertising  fields  give  place  to  more  houses,  more  rail 
ways,  under  a  sky  black  with  clouds,  or  smoke, —  one  hardly 
knows  which, —  and  on  both  sides  of  the  road  begin  to  appear 
fenced  enclosures,  where  cattle  are  penned  by  the  hundred. 
There  are  narrow  lanes  between  the  fence,  with  men  on  horse 
back  riding  up  and  down.  These  are  the  buyers,  discussing 
prices  with  the  "  cowboys  "  of  the  West. 

You  have  read  stories  of  the  "ranches."  This  adventur 
ous  prairie  life  has  taken  hold  upon  your  imagination.  Here 
you  behold  its  heroes,  in  threadbare  overcoats,  slouch  hats, 
and  the  inevitable  collar  and  cuffs  of  the  American.  But  for 
their  boots,  and  their  dexterity  in  guiding  their  horses  by  the 
knees,  you  would  take  them  for  clerks.  They  are  a  proof, 
among  many  others,  of  the  instinctive  disdain  of  this  realistic 
people  for  the  picturesque  in  costume.  That  impression 
which  I  had  in  the  park  in  New  York,  almost  the  first  day,  as 
of  an  immense  store  of  ready-made  clothes  hurrying  hither 
and  thither,  has  never  left  me.  And  yet,  nothing  can  be  less 
"common,"  in  the  bad  sense  of  the  word,  than  Americans  in 
general,  and  these  Western  cowboys  in  particular.  Their 
bodies  are  too  nervous,  too  lithe,  under  their  cheap  clothes. 
Their  countenances,  especially,  are  too  intent  and  too  sharply 
outlined,  too  decided  and  too  stern. 

The  carriage  stops  before  a  building  which,  in  its  massive- 
ness  and  want  of  character,  is  like  all  other  manufactories. 
My  companions  and  I  enter  a  court,  a  sort  of  alley,  crowded 
with  packing-boxes,  carts,  and  people.  A  miniature  railway 
passes  along  it,  carrying  packing-boxes  to  a  waiting  train, 
entirely  composed  of  refrigerator  cars,  such  as  I  saw  so  many 
of  as  I  came  to  Chicago.  Laborers  were  unloading  these 
packing-boxes;  others  were  coming  and  going,  evidently  in 
tent  upon  their  respective  duties.  There  was  no  sign  of 
administrative  order,  as  we  conceive  it,  in  this  establishment, 
which  was  yet  so  well  ordered.  But  already  one  of  the  engineers 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  123 

had  led  us  up  a  staircase,  and  we  enter  an  immense  hall, 
reeking  with  heavy  moisture  saturated  with  a  strong  acrid 
odor,  which  seems  to  seize  you  by  the  throat.  We  are  in  the 
department  where  the  hogs  are  cut  up.  There  are  hundreds 
of  men  hard  at  work,  whom  we  have  not  time  so  much  as  to 
look  at.  Our  guide  warns  us  to  stand  aside,  and  before  us 
glides  a  file  of  porkers,  disembowelled  and  hung  by  their  hind 
feet  from  a  rod,  along  which  they  slip  toward  a  vaulted  open 
ing,  where  innumerable  other  such  files  await  them.  The 
rosy  flesh,  still  ruddy  with  the  life  that  but  now  animated 
them,  gleams  under  the  electric  light  that  illuminates  those 
depths.  We  go  on,  avoiding  these  strange  encounters  as  best 
we  may,  and  reach  at  last,  with  feet  smeared  in  a  sort  of 
bloody  mud,  a  platform  whence  we  can  see  the  initial  act  of 
all  this  labor,  which  now  seems  so  confused,  but  which  we 
shall  shortly  find  so  simple  and  easy  to  understand.  There 
are  the  pigs,  in  a  sort  of  pit,  alive,  grunting  and  screaming, 
as  if  they  had  a  vision  of  the  approach  of  the  horrible  ma 
chine,  from  which  they  can  no  more  escape  than  a  doomed 
man  whose  head  lies  on  the  guillotine.  It  is  a  sort  of  mov 
able  hook,  which,  being  lowered  by  a  man,  seizes  one  of  the 
creatures  by  the  cord  which  ties  its  hind  legs  together.  The 
animal  gives  a  screech,  as  he  hangs,  head  downward,  with  quiv 
ering  snout  and  a  spasmodic  agitation  of  his  short  fore  legs. 
But  already  the  hook  has  slid  along  the  iron  bar,  carrying  the 
hapless  victim  to  a  neighboring  recess  where,  as  it  slips  by,  a 
man  armed  with  a  long  knife  cuts  its  throat,  with  a  slash  so 
well  aimed  and  effective  that  there  is  no  need  to  repeat  it. 
The  creature  utters  a  more  terrific  screech,  a  stream  of  blood 
spurts  out,  jet  black  and  as  thick  as  your  arm.  The  snout 
quivers  more  pitifully,  the  short  legs  are  agitated  more  franti 
cally,  but  the  death  struggle  only  quickens  the  motion  of  the 
hook,  which  glides  on  to  a  third  attendant. 
The  latter,  with  a  quick  movement,  cuts  down  the  animal. 


124  OUTRE-MER 

The  hook  slides  back,  and  the  carcass  falls  into  a  sort  of  canal 
tank  filled  with  boiling  water,  in  which  an  automatic  rake 
works  with  a  quick  vibratory  motion.  In  a  few  seconds  it  has 
caught  the  creature,  turned  it  over  and  over,  caught  it  again, 
and  thrown  the  scalded  carcass  to  another  machine,  which  in 
a  few  more  seconds  has  shaved  it  from  head  to  tail.  In  an 
other  second,  another  hook  has  descended,  and  another  bar 
carries  that  which,  four  minutes  ago,  was  a  living,  suffering 
creature,  toward  that  arched  opening  where,  on  coming  in,  I 
had  seen  so  many  similar  relics.  It  is  already  the  turn  of 
another  to  be  killed,  shaved,  and  finished  off.  The  operation 
is  of  such  lightning  quickness  that  you  have  no  time  to  realize 
its  atrocity.  You  have  no  time  to  pity  the  poor  things,  no 
time  to  marvel  at  the  cheerfulness  with  which  the  butcher  — 
a  red-headed  giant,  with  shoulders  broad  enough  to  carry  an 
ox  —  goes  on  with  his  horrible  work. 

And  yet,  even  in  its  lower  forms,  life  is  something  so  mys 
terious,  the  death  and  sufferings,  even  of  a  creature  of  the 
humblest  order,  are  something  so  tragic  when,  instead  of  care 
lessly  picturing  them  you  look  them  thus  full  in  the  face,  that 
all  spectators,  and  they  are  many,  cease  to  laugh  and  joke. 
For  my  part,  before  this  coarse  slaughter-house  scene  I  felt 
myself  seized  with  an  unreasoning  sadness,  very  short  but  very 
intense,  as  if,  for  a  few  minutes,  the  spirit  of  Thomas  Grain- 
dorge  had  passed  before  me, —  the  philosophic  dealer  in  salt 
pork  and  oil,  so  dear  to  my  master,  Taine.  It  suddenly 
seemed  as  if  I  saw  before  me  existence  itself,  and  all  the  work 
of  nature,  incarnated  in  a  pitiable  symbol.  All  that  I  had 
often  thought  of  death  was  as  if  concrete  before  my  eyes,  in 
the  irresistible  clutch  of  that  hook  lifting  those  creatures,  as 
the  overpowering  force  of  destruction  which  is  in  the  world 
will  one  day  seize  us  all, —  sages,  heroes,  artists,  as  well  as 
these  poor  unconscious  brutes.  I  saw  them  rushing,  writhing, 
moaning,  their  death  agonies  following  fast  on  one  another, 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  125 

as  ours  follow  one  another,  only  a  little  more  rapidly, —  how 
little  more,  considering  how  fast  time  flies,  and  how  small  a 
part  remains  for  all  that  must  be  done !  And  the  way  that  we 
looked  in  at  this  ghastly  scene,  my  companions  and  I,  was 
in  nothing  different  from  the  way  with  which  others  will  one 
day  look  on  at  our  entrance  into  the  great  darkness,  as  on  a 
picture,  a  something  exterior,  whose  reality,  after  all,  concerns 
only  the  being  who  undergoes  it! 

We  went  into  the  department  reserved  for  the  cattle.  Here 
the  death  struggle  is  different.  No  outcry,  almost  no  blood; 
no  terrified  expectation  on  the  creature's  part.  And  the  scene 
is  all  the  more  tragic.  The  animals  are  penned  by  twos,  in 
stalls  like  those  of  a  stable,  though  without  the  manger.  You 
see  them  trying,  with  their  intelligence  and  their  gentleness, 
to  accommodate  themselves  to  the  narrow  space.  They  gazed 
with  their  large,  soft  eyes  —  upon  whom?  The  butcher, 
standing  in  a  passageway  a  little  above  them.  This  man 
holds  in  his  hand  a  slender  bludgeon  of  steel.  He  is  waiting 
until  the  ox  is  in  the  right  position.  You  see  him  gently, 
caressingly,  guiding  the  animal  with  the  tip  of  his  bludgeon. 
Suddenly  he  uplifts  it.  It  falls  upon  the  creature's  forehead, 
and  it  sinks  down  in  a  lifeless  heap. 

In  an  instant  a  hook  has  lifted  it  up,  blood  pouring  from 
the  mouth  and  nostrils,  its  large  glassy  eyes  overshadowed  with 
a  growing  darkness,  and  within  another  minute  another  man 
has  stripped  the  skin  from  the  breast,  letting  it  hang  down 
like  an  apron,  has  cut  open  the  carcass,  and  sent  it  by  the 
expeditious  method  of  the  sliding  bar,  to  take  its  place  in  the 
refrigerating-room.  Thousands  of  them  await  here  the  time 
for  being  carried  and  hung  up  in  other  rooms,  also  of  ice,  but 
on  wheels,  ready  to  be  despatched.  I  see  the  closing  of  the 
last  car  of  a  train  on  the  point  of  departure.  The  locomotive 
whistles  and  puffs;  the  bell  rings.  On  what  table  of  New 
York  or  Boston,  Philadelphia  or  Savannah,  will  at  last  appear 


126  OUTRE-MER 

this  meat,  fattened  on  the  prairie  pasture-lands  of  some  dis 
trict  in  some  Western  State,  and  here  prepared  in  such  a  way 
that  the  butcher  will  have  merely  to  cut  it  into  pieces?  It 
will  arrive  as  fresh,  as  intact,  as  if  there  had  not  been  thou 
sands  and  thousands  of  miles  between  the  birth,  death,  and 
dismemberment  of  the  enigmatical  and  peaceable  creature. 

If  there  was  nothing  but  killing  to  be  seen  in  this  manufact 
ure  of  food,  it  would  hardly  be  worth  while  to  go  through  so 
many  bloody  scenes  for  the  sake  of  verifying,  in  one  of  its 
lower  exemplifications,  what  the  philosopher  Huxley  some 
where  magnificently  calls  "the  gladiatorial  theory  of  exist 
ence,"  the  severe  law  that  murder  is  necessary  to  life.  But 
this  is  only  a  first  impression,  to  experience  before  passing  to 
a  second,  that  of  the  rapidity  and  ingenuity  of  the  cutting-up 
and  packing  of  this  prodigious  quantity  of  perishable  meat. 
I  don't  know  who  it  was  who  sportively  said  that  a  pig  that 
went  to  the  abattoir  at  Chicago  came  out  fifteen  minutes  later 
in  the  form  of  ham,  sausages,  large  and  small,  hair  oil,  and 
binding  for  a  Bible.  It  is  a  witty  exaggeration,  yet  hardly 
overdone,  of  the  rapid  and  minute  labor  which  we  had  just 
seen  bestowed  upon  the  beasts  killed  before  our  eyes;  and  the 
subdividing  of  this  work,  its  precision,  simplicity,  quick  suc 
cession,  succeeding  in  making  us  forget  the  necessary  but 
intolerable  brutality  of  the  scenes  we  had  been  witnessing. 

An  immense  hall  is  furnished  with  a  succession  of  counters 
placed  without  much  order,  where  each  member  of  the  animal 
is  cut  apart  and  utilized  without  the  loss  of  a  bone  or  a  tendon. 
Here,  with  a  quick,  automatic  blow,  which  never  misses,  a 
man  cuts  off  first  the  hams,  then  the  feet,  as  fast  as  he  can 
throw  them  into  caldrons,  which  boil  and  smoke  them  before 
your  eyes.  Farther  along,  a  hatchet,  moved  by  machinery, 
is  at  work  making  sausage-meat,  which  tubes  of  all  sizes  will 
pour  forth  in  rolls  ready  for  the  skins,  that  are  all  washed 
and  prepared.  The  word  "garlic,"  which  I  see  written  on  a 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  127 

box  in  German,  "Knoblauch,"  and  the  accompanying  inscrip 
tion,  transports  me  to  the  time  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War, 
when  each  Prussian  soldier  carried  in  his  sack  just  such  pro 
visions,  which  had  come  from  this  very  place.  These  products 
of  Chicagoan  industry  will  be  sent  far  enough  beyond  New  York ! 

Elsewhere  the  head  and  jowl  are  cleaned,  trimmed,  and 
dressed,  to  figure  in  their  natural  form  in  the  show  window 
of  some  American  or  European  market.  Elsewhere,  again, 
enormous  receptacles  are  being  filled  with  suet  which  boils 
and  bubbles,  and  having  been  cunningly  mixed  with  a  certain 
proportion  of  cream  will  be  transformed  into  margarine,  re 
fined  in  an  automatic  beating  machine  of  which  we  admired 
the  artful  simplicity. 

"A  workingman  invented  that,"  said  our  guide.  "For 
that  matter,"  he  added,  "almost  all  the  machines  that  are 
used  here  were  either  made  or  improved  by  the  workmen." 

These  words  shed  light  for  us  upon  all  this  vast  work 
shop.  We  understood  what  these  men  require  of  a  machine 
that  for  them  prolongs,  multiplies,  perfects  the  acts  of  men. 
Once  again  we  felt  how  much  they  have  become  refined  in 
their  processes  of  work,  how  they  excel  in  combining  with 
their  personal  effort  the  complication  of  machinery,  and  also 
how  the  least  among  them  has  a  power  of  initiative,  of  direct 
vision  and  adjustment. 

Seated  again  in  our  carriage,  and  rolling  away  over  the 
irregular  wooden  pavement  made  of  round  sections  of  trees 
embedded  at  pleasure  in  the  mud,  we  reflected  upon  what  we 
had  just  seen.  We  tried  to  discern  its  intellectual  significance, 
if  we  may  use  this  word  in  reference  to  such  an  enterprise. 
And  why  not  ?  We  are  all  agreed  that  the  first  characteristic 
of  this  enterprise  is  the  amplitude,  or  rather  the  stupendous- 
ness,  of  its  conception.  For  an  establishment  like  this  to  have, 
in  a  few  years,  brought  up  the  budget  of  its  employees  to  five 
million  five  hundred  thousand  dollars,  that  is,  to  more  than 


128  OUTRE-MER 

twenty-seven  millions  of  francs,  its  founders  must  have  clearly 
perceived  the  possibilities  of  an  enormous  extension  of  busi 
ness,  and  have  no  less  clearly  perceived,  defined,  and  deter 
mined  its  practical  features. 

A  colossal  effort  of  imagination  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the 
other,  at  the  service  of  the  imagination,  a  clear  and  carefully 
estimated  understanding  of  the  encompassing  reality,  —  these 
are  the  two  features  everywhere  stamped  upon  the  unparalleled 
establishment  which  we  have  just  visited.  One  of  us  pointed 
out  another  fact,  —  that  the  principal  practical  feature  is  the 
railway,  reminding  us  that  the  locomotive  has  always  been  an 
implement  of  general  utility  in  American  hands.  By  it  they 
revolutionized  military  art  and  created  a  full-panoplied  modern 
warfare,  such  as  the  Germans  were  later  to  practise  at  our 
expense.  In  the  great  national  war  of  1860,  they  first  showed 
what  advantage  could  be  taken  of  this  new  means  of  mobili 
zation.  The  length  of  the  trains  they  sent  out  during  that 
period  has  passed  into  legend.  In  fact,  the  establishment 
which  we  have  been  discussing  is  only  one  particular  case  of 
that  universal  use  of  the  railway,  which  is  itself  only  a  partic 
ular  illustration  of  that  essentially  American  turn  of  mind,  — 
the  constant  use  of  new  methods. 

The  entire  absence  of  routine,  the  daily  habit  of  letting  the 
fact  determine  the  action,  of  following  it  fearlessly  to  the  end, — 
these  characteristics  grow  out  of  the  other,  and  this  acute  con 
sciousness  of  the  fact  also  explains  that  sort  of  superficial 
incoherence  in  the  distribution  of  labor  which  we  have  already 
noticed.  Extreme  clearness,  perspicuity  of  administrative  order, 
always  spring  from  an  a  priori  theory.  All  societies  and  all 
enterprises  in  which  realism,  rather  than  system,  rules  are  con 
structed  by  juxtaposition,  by  series  of  facts  accepted  as  they 
arise.  But  how  should  the  people  here  have  leisure  to  concern 
themselves  with  those  small,  fine  points  of  administrative  order 
with  which  our  Latin  peoples  are  so  much  in  love  ?  Competi- 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  129 

tion  is  too  strong,  too  ferocious,  almost  There  is  all  of  war 
fare  and  its  breathless  audacity  back  of  the  enterprises  of  this 
country,  even  of  those  most  firmly  established,  like  this  one. 

Our  guide,  who  listens  to  our  philosophizing  without  seeming 
much  to  disapprove,  tells  us  that  this  very  year,  in  order  to 
elude  a  coalition  of  speculators  in  grain,  which  he  explains  to 
us,  the  head  of  the  house  which  we  have  just  visited  was  forced 
to  erect  in  nineteen  days,  for  the  housing  of  his  own  wheat,  a 
building  three  hundred  feet  square  by  a  hundred  high  ! 

"Yes,  in  nineteen  days,  working  night  and  day,"  he  said, 
smiling ;  "  but  we  Americans  like  '  hard  work.'  " 

With  this  almost  untranslatable  word,  —  to  one  who  has  not 
heard  it  uttered  here,  —  our  visit  ends.  It  sums  it  up  and 
completes  it  with  a  terseness  worthy  of  this  people  of  much 
action  and  few  phrases  ! 

I  visited  in  detail  the  building  of  one  of  the  principal  Chicago 
newspapers,  just  when  they  were  printing  the  Sunday  edition, 
—  a  trifling  affair  of  twenty-four  pages.  I  had  seen  in  New 
York  also  on  a  Saturday  evening,  the  making  up  of  such  a 
number,  —  that  of  the  Herald.  It  had  forty  pages,  and  pict 
ures  !  There  was  a  matter  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
copies  to  be  sent  out  by  the  early  morning  trains.  When  the 
circulation  reaches  such  figures  as  these,  a  newspaper  is  not 
merely  a  machine  for  moulding  public  opinion,  of  a  power 
incalculable  in  a  democratic  country,  it  is  also  an  inconceivably 
complicated  business  to  carry  on.  Precisely  because  this  busi 
ness  differs  radically  from  that  which  the  day  before  yesterday 
I  was  endeavoring  to  understand,  I  shall  be  the  better  able  to 
judge  whether  the  general  features  which  I  there  discovered 
are  to  be  found  in  all  American  enterprises.  I  can  judge  of 
that  more  easily  here  than  in  New  York,  the  number  of  copies 
of  the  paper  being  somewhat  less  than  in  New  York,  and  the 
process  of  shipping  more  convenient  to  follow. 

K 


130  OUTRE-MER 

It  needed  not  five  hundred  steps  in  these  offices  to  make 
evident  to  me  the  simultaneous  play  of  those  two  mental  ten 
dencies  which  appeared  to  me  so  characteristic  the  other  day,  — 
the  enormous  range  of  invention,  and  the  constant,  minute, 
ever- watchful  adoption  of  new  means.  The  American  journalist 
does  not  propose  to  himself  to  reach  this  or  that  reader,  but  all 
readers.  He  does  not  propose  to  publish  articles  of  this  or 
that  kind,  but  of  all  kinds.  His  purpose  is  to  make  his  news 
paper  an  accurate  mould  of  all  that  actually  is,  a  sort  of  relief 
map,  which  shall  be  an  epitome,  not  of  the  day,  but  of  the 
hour,  the  minute,  so  all-embracing  and  complete  that  to 
morrow  a  hundred  thousand,  two  hundred  thousand,  a  million 
persons  shall  have  before  them  at  breakfast  a  compendious 
picture  first  of  their  own  city,  next  of  their  State,  then  of  all 
the  States  of  the  Union,  and  finally  of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and 
Australia.  Nor  does  this  ambition  content  them ;  it  is  their 
will  that  these  hundred  thousand,  two  hundred  thousand,  mil 
lion  of  readers  shall  find  in  their  favorite  newspaper  that  which 
shall  answer  all  questions  of  every  sort  which  they  may  put  to 
themselves  upon  politics,  finance,  religion,  the  arts,  literature, 
sport,  society,  and  the  sciences.  It  is  a  daily  encyclopedia,  set 
to  the  key  of  the  passing  moment,  which  is  already  past. 

The  meaning  of  this  colossal  project  is  shown  naturally  and 
in  every  possible  way  in  every  part  of  the  newspaper  building. 
Workmen  and  editors  must  be  able  to  take  their  meals  at  any 
hour,  and  without  leaving  the  building.  They  have  therefore 
their  own  bar  and  restaurant.  The  printing  of  the  pictures,  so 
dear  to  Americans,  must  not  be  delayed.  The  paper  has  its 
type  foundry,  a  regular  smelting-shop,  where  the  lead  boils  in 
the  coppers.  The  news  must  be  gathered  up  to  the  last  second, 
like  water  in  the  desert,  without  losing  a  drop.  The  paper  has 
its  own  telegraph  and  telephone  wires,  by  which  it  is  in  com 
munication  with  the  entire  world.  At  the  time  of  the  last  presi 
dential  election,  a  number  of  Mr.  Cleveland's  partisans  came 


BUSINESS   MEN   AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  131 

together  here,  in  one  of  the  editorial  rooms  which  was  shown 
me,  and  from  there  they  conversed  with  the  candidate,  himself 
in  New  York,  receiving  his  instructions  and  giving  him  informa 
tion.  And  what  presses  !  Capable  of  turning  off  work  which 
thirty  years  ago  would  have  required  a  force  of  how  many  hun 
dreds  of  men  !  Two  workmen  are  enough  to-day. 

I  find  here  a  press  of  the  kind  of  which  I  saw  a  large  size  in 
the  New  York  Herald  building,  which,  they  told  me  there,  turned 
off  seventy-thousand  numbers  in  two  hours.  The  enormous 
machine  is  going  at  full  speed  when  I  approach  it.  Its  roar  is 
so  great  that  no  voice  can  be  heard  beside  it.  It  is  a  noise 
like  the  roar  of  Niagara,  and  the  colossal  strip  of  paper  rapidly 
unrolling  as  it  is  drawn  through  the  machine  gives  an  effect  as 
of  falling  water,  or  the  eddying  of  liquid  metal.  You  see  a 
whiteness  gliding  by,  bent  and  folded  by  the  play  of  innumer 
able  bars  of  steel,  and  at  the  other  end  a  sort  of  mouth  pouring 
forth  newspapers  of  sixteen  pages  all  ready  for  distribution. 
The  machine  has  seized  the  paper,  turned  and  re-turned  it, 
printed  it  on  both  sides,  cut  it,  folded  it,  and  here  is  a  portion 
of  a  colossal  number  which  without  undue  haste  a  child  joins 
with  the  other  portions. 

In  presence  of  this  formidable  printing  creature  —  it  is  the 
only  expression  that  will  serve  my  turn  —  I  feel  again,  as  in 
New  York,  a  sensation  as  of  a  power  which  transcends  the 
individual.  This  printing  press  is  a  multiplier  of  thought  to 
an  extent  not  measurable  by  any  human  arithmetic.  There  is 
a  singular  contrast  between  the  extreme  precision  of  its  organs 
—  as  delicate  and  accurate  as  those  of  a  watch  —  and  that  in 
definite  reach  of  mind  projection  which  Americans  accept 
as  they  accept  all  facts.  To  their  mind  amplitude  calls  for 
amplitude  by  a  sequence  which  it  is  easy  to  follow  in  the 
history  of  journalism;  having  conceived  the  idea  of  a  paper 
of  enormous  circulation,  they  invented  machines  which  would 
produce  copies  enough,  and,  as  their  machines  appeared  to 


132  OUTRE-MER 

them  capable  of  producing  a  large  number  of  copies,  their 
conception  of  circulation  increased  in  parallel  lines.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  in  less  than  twenty  years  they  will  have 
found  means  of  producing  papers  of  which  five  hundred 
thousand  copies  a  day  will  be  sold,  like  our  Petit  Journal, 
only  theirs  will  have  sixteen,  twenty-four,  forty,  sixty  folio 
pages. 

This  is  the  practical  aspect  of  the  plant;  there  is  another. 
In  vain  is  a  newspaper  conceived  of  and  managed  as  a  matter 
of  business  —  it  is  a  business  of  a  special  kind.  It  must  have 
a  moral  purpose,  must  take  its  stand  for  or  against  such  a  law, 
for  or  against  such  a  person;  it  must  have  its  own  individu 
ality.  It  cannot  owe  its  individuality,  as  with  us,  to  the  per 
sonality  of  its  editors,  since  its  articles  are  not  signed;  nor 
even,  as  in  England,  to  the  style  and  manner  of  the  articles. 
The  "editorial,"  as  they  call  the  leaders,  occupies  too  small 
a  place  in  this  enormous  mass  of  printed  paper.  And  yet 
each  one  of  the  great  newspapers  of  New  York,  Chicago,  or 
Boston  is  a  creation  by  itself,  made  in  the  image  of  him  who 
edits  it,  —  usually  the  proprietor.  In  the  same  way  the  presi 
dent  of  a  railway  company  is  usually  the  principal  stockholder. 

Here,  again,  is  a  particular  feature  of  large  business  enter 
prises  in  America  and  one  which  explains  their  vitality;  a 
business  is  always  the  property  of  a  man,  the  visible  will  of 
that  man,  his  energy,  as  it  were,  incarnated  and  made  evi 
dent.  The  formula  which  I  just  now  used  and  emphasized 
very  happily  expresses  this  intimate  relation  between  the  man 
and  his  work.  You  will  hear  it  currently  said  that  Mr.  So- 
and-so  has  long  been  "identified"  with  such  a  hotel,  such  a 
bank,  or  railway,  or  newspaper,  and  this  identification  is  so 
complete  that  if,  on  passing  in  a  street  car  before  that  hotel 
or  bank,  or  railway  station,  or  newspaper,  you  ask  your  neigh 
bor  about  it,  he  will  always  reply  to  you  with  a  proper  name. 
From  this  it  results  that  in  all  American  enterprises  there  is 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  133 

an  elasticity,  a  vitality,  a  continual  "Forward!"  and  also  an 
indefatigable  combativeness. 

I  recognize  this  latter  characteristic  once  again  as  I  pass 
through  these  offices,  if  only  by  the  minute  questions  of  my 
guide  as  to  the  French  press  and  our  methods  of  securing  a 
superior  literary  criticism.  They  feel  that  this  is  our  peculiar 
excellence,  and  they  long  to  have  their  own  newspapers  attain 
to  it.  Every  actual  director  of  one  of  these  great  public  enter 
prises  is  thus  on  the  watch  for  possible  modifications  which 
may  distinguish  his  sheet  from  all  others,  continually  working 
it  over  and  loading  it  down  with  more  facts,  more  articles, 
enrolling  more  people  in  its  service,  employing  them  to 
better  purpose. 

Thus  managed,  the  direction  of  such  an  enterprise  becomes 
a  work  of  incalculable  complexity.  The  power  to  which 
these  dictators  of  public  opinion  attain  is  so  exceptional  and 
so  real,  its  existence  means  so  much  that  is  dear  to  Ameri 
cans,  —  immense  fortune  and  immense  responsibility,  enor 
mous  labor  to  undergo  and  the  continual  manifestation  of  the 
fact  that  the  ambition  of  truly  enterprising  men  continually 
impels  them  into  these  lines.  A  city  is  no  sooner  founded 
than  papers  begin  to  multiply.  Some  of  them  have  their  news 
papers  before  they  are  even  founded.  It  still  sometimes 
occurs  that  the  government  gives  up  a  large  stretch  of  terri 
tory  to  an  invasion  of  immigrants.  At  a  given  signal  they 
hasten  thither,  fall  upon  it,  and  each  bit  of  land  belongs  to 
the  first  occupant.  That  very  evening  or  the  next  morning,  on 
the  plain  where  wagons  and  tents  vaguely  indicate  the  outline 
of  a  city,  you  will  always  find  a  liquor  saloon,  a  postoffice, 
a  church,  and  a  newspaper ! 

Who  knows  that  these  wagons  and  tents  are  not  the  begin 
ning  of  a  Minneapolis,  a  St.  Paul,  a  Chicago?  Who  knows 
that  in  twenty-five  years  this  town  will  not  have  a  hundred 
thousand,  two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  and  the  news- 


134  OUTRE-MER 

paper  as  many  readers?  The  insignificance  of  a  beginning 
never  frightens  an  American  who  is  planning  for  business. 
Just  as  in  meditating  on  the  future  of  a  business  enterprise, 
there  is  no  possibility  of  extension  which  does  not  occur  to 
him,  so  no  mediocrity  disheartens  him.  He  has  before  him 
too  many  examples  of  gigantic  results  attained  from  very  small 
and  humble  beginnings.  The  greatest  railway  in  the  United 
States,  the  Central  Pacific,  was  founded  by  four  men  almost 
without  resources,  two  of  whom  were  small  shopkeepers  in 
'Frisco.  They  built  the  first  sections  of  the  line,  mile  by  mile, 
without  money  to  go  forward  except  bit  by  bit.  Legend  has 
it  that  in  certain  cases  they  were  obliged  to  lay  the  rails  with 
their  own  hands  ! 

While  I  am  submitting  these  very  general  reflections  to  my 
companion,  as  we  pass  through  the  halls,  I  observe  a  number 
of  men,  nearly  all  young,  bent  over  their  desks  and  writing  with 
that  absorbed  attention  which  speaks  again  of  "hard  work," 
the  faculty  of  giving  all  one's  powers  to  the  present  duty. 
Others  are  receiving  despatches  which  they  immediately  trans 
mit  on  writing-machines.  There  is  none  of  that  club  atmos 
phere  which  makes  the  charm  of  Parisian  editorial  rooms.  At 
this  hour,  over  there,  the  paper  is  nearly  ready,  and  even  while 
the  last  touches  are  being  added  they  talk ;  they  smoke  ;  they 
play  cards,  dominoes,  cup  and  ball.  Here  in  this  precocious 
news-factory  leisure  is  wanting,  and  the  power  to  enjoy  leisure. 

To  appreciate  the  difference  between  the  two  editorial  of 
fices,  one  must  set  over  against  one  another  the  two  personali 
ties  of  the  French  and  the  American  reporter.  The  principal 
quality  of  the  former  is  to  be  witty  and  clever.  His  articles 
are  signed,  and,  in  consequence,  his  literary  self-consciousness 
is  always  somewhat  mingled  with  the  notes  to  which  he  makes 
a  point  of  giving  his  own  peculiar  touch.  You  know  him  as 
mocking  or  sarcastic,  caustic  or  pathetic.  He  is  an  artist  even 
in  his  work  of  ephemeral  statement,  and  his  best  successes  are 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  135 

most  generally  in  a  sort  of  picturesque  chit-chat.  He  has  a 
certain  impressionism,  and  you  will  find  in  his  "  copy  "  some 
thing  of  the  methods  of  the  best  writers  of  the  day.  The 
American  reporter  remains  unknown,  even  when  he  gives  to 
his  journal  news,  to  obtain  which  has  cost  him  prodigies  of 
shrewdness  and  energy.  As  if  to  show  him  that  the  important 
matter  is  not  the  quality  of  his  phrases,  but  that  of  the  facts 
he  brings,  he  is  paid  by  the  word.  There  is  in  him  something 
of  the  man  of  action,  and  something  of  the  detective.  Sensa 
tional  novels  naturally  take  for  their  hero  this  personage,  whose 
master  virtue  is  strength  of  will.  He  must  always  be  ready  to 
set  out  for  the  most  remote  countries,  where  he  will  be  obliged 
to  play  the  part  of  explorer,  and  just  as  ready  to  descend 
to  the  lowest  social  stratum,  where  he  will  need  to  act  as 
policeman. 

In  this  strenuous  school  he  may,  if  he  has  the  gift,  become 
a  writer  of  the  first  order.  Richard  Harding  Davis,  the  creator 
of  Gallegher  and  Van  Bibber,  is  a  case  in  point.  A  man  who 
is  himself  a  judge  of  style,  having  an  extraordinary  faculty  for 
language  in  his  letters  and  public  utterances  —  Bismarck  — 
goes  so  far  as  to  insist  that  reporting,  as  Americans  understand 
it,  is  the  best  school  for  a  man  of  letters  who  desires  to  picture 
the  movement  of  life.  The  opinion  is  of  the  order  of  those 
uttered  by  the  Emperor  at  St.  Helena,  very  partial  and  full  of 
misunderstanding  of  the  character  of  literary  thought.  It  was 
worth  citing ;  for  it  is  very  true  that  those  improvised,  almost 
telegraphic,  paragraphs,  in  which  the  fact  appears  in  its  strong 
immediate  clearness,  often  stand  out  in  a  relief  which  art  cannot 
equal.  But  it  is  an  unconscious  relief,  over  which  the  reporter 
has  had  no  anxiety.  His  anxiety  is  to  be  exact,  and  every  means 
is  good  that  will  secure  accuracy.  Many  people  are  indignant 
at  his  methods,  and  sometimes  they  are  not  wrong.  Last  sum 
mer  I  was  passing  through  Beverly,  near  Boston,  at  the  time 
of  the  death  of  one  of  the  most  distinguished  officers  of  the 


136  OUTRE-MER 

Federal  army.  The  corpse  was  to  be  carried  to  Baltimore, 
and  a  funeral  service  was  first  celebrated  in  the  little  village 
church.  In  the  midst  of  the  ceremony,  a  young  man  entered, 
drew  near  to  the  coffin,  gently  raised  the  pall,  tapped  the  cover 
with  his  finger,  and  said  softly  :  — 

"  Steel,  not  wood." 

Then  he  disappeared,  in  the  midst  of  universal  surprise ;  it 
was  a  reporter. 

These  ruthless  audacities  of  research  are,  however,  performed 
with  a  certain  simplicity,  almost  ingenuousness.  I  have  read 
many  "  interviews  "  and  many  personal  paragraphs,  and,  short 
as  has  been  my  time  in  America,  I  could  count  those  which 
have  in  them  anything  wounding  or  even  one  of  those  humors 
of  the  pen  so  habitual  among  the  most  insignificant  paragrapher 
of  the  boulevards.  This  sort  of  innocence  of  a  press  so  auda 
cious  in  its  investigations  is  explained,  I  think,  first,  by  the 
professional  character  of  the  reporter,  and  next,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  by  that  of  the  reader.  The  reporter  holds  it  to  be  his 
duty  to  give  the  reader  the  greatest  possible  number  of  facts. 
The  reader  considers  it  his  right  to  have  these  facts.  In  the 
superabundance  of  positive  details  the  place  reserved  for  each 
personality  is  too  short  to  admit  of  an  ill-natured  insinuation. 
The  reporter  no  more  has  time  to  point  an  epigram  than  the 
detective  to  whom  I  but  now  compared  him  has  time  to  make  a 
practical  joke  upon  the  one  he  is  questioning.  He  is  much  more 
occupied  in  discovering  "  head-lines,"  a  collection  of  which 
would  constitute  the  most  humorous  chapter  of  a  journey  to 
the  United  States.  Just  now,  on  entering  the  room  of  the 
newspaper  reserved  for  necrologies,  where  all  the  biographies 
of  celebrated  living  men  are  ranged  in  pigeonholes,  I  saw  upon 
the  table  a  proof  of  an  article  prepared  for  a  celebrated  singer 
who,  at  the  moment,  was  very  ill,  with  this  "  heading  "  :  "  The 
crystal  voice  is  broken.  The  bird  will  sing  no  more." 

As  the  charming  woman  got  better,  the  article  joined  the 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  137 

thousands  of  similar  paragraphs  which  are  waiting  their  turn 
among  proofs  of  pictures  representing  buildings  and  men. 

"  Buildings  may  burn  and  men  may  die,"  said  my  guide,  philo 
sophically.  Seeing  me  amused  by  the  fancifulness  of  these  titles, 
he  drew  my  attention  to  one  which  would  appear  on  the  morrow 
—  the  most  surprising  one,  perhaps,  which  I  have  seen  —  "  Jerked 
to  Jesus."  It  was  the  account  of  the  hanging  of  a  negro,  a 
"  colored  gentleman,"  for  "  the  usual  crime,"  as  they  euphe 
mistically  say  here,  that  of  having  outraged  a  white  woman. 
He  repented  on  the  eve  of  his  execution  and  died  Christianly. 
I  am  not  sure  that  the  reporter  who  summed  up  this  death  in 
these  three  sensational  words  is  not  himself  a  believer,  who 
distinctly  saw  in  this  event  the  entrance  of  a  ransomed  soul 
into  paradise.  Certainly,  thousands  of  plain  readers  will  do  so 
by  the  mere  force  of  this  announcement.  What  would  be  the 
head-lines  if  the  matter  in  hand  was  not  so  vulgar  an  event  as 
this,  but  the  arrival  or  departure  of  a  pugilist,  or  his  meeting 
with  another  prize-fighter? 

"  That  is  the  incident  which  most  swells  the  circulation  of  a 
paper,"  said  my  companion.  "Why  not?"  he  added;  "we 
Anglo-Saxons  love  a  '  fight.'  We  like  it  in  politics,  and  this  is 
why  we  must  always  see  two  '  leaders  '  facing  one  another. 
We  like  it  in  our  enterprises,  and  that  is  why  I  can  never  be 
content  until  I  have  made  my  paper  the  first  in  the  United 
States.  We  like  it  even  when  it  is  only  a  question  of  fisticuffs. 
And  I  think  our  race  will  lose  something  the  day  when  we  are 
too  nearly  cured  of  the  latter.  It  will  take  time  for  that," 
he  added,  with  a  smile  that  lighted  up  his  countenance  —  a 
smile  in  which  I  found,  as  among  many  business  men  of  this 
country,  a  little  of  the  square  solidity  of  the  bull-dog.  I  am 
not  far  from  thinking,  with  him,  that  there  is,  in  fact,  an  instinc 
tive  education  in  the  national  amusements,  ferocious  as  they 
seem  to  be.  Certainly,  all  that  teaches  the  calculated  ardor  of 
attack  and  the  invincible  self-restraint  of  resistance  is  useful  to 


138  OUTRE-MER 

men  destined  to  live  in  a  country  where  they  everywhere  meet 
so  intense  an  energy  that,  in  ten  years,  this  newspaper  building, 
these  machines^the  very  paper  itself,  will  be  things  of  the 
past,  slow,  unformed,  behind  the  times.  This  is  what  a  New 
Yorker  replied  to  my  utterance  of  apprehension  with  regard  to 
crossing  by  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  :  — 

"  It  is  not  possible  that  it  will  not  fall  some  day,"  I  said. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  "  between  now  and  then  we  shall  have 
built  another,  and  this  one  will  be  out  of  fashion." 

I  went  by  one  of  the  great  Western  lines,  in  company  of  one 
of  the  directors,  to  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis.  My  object  in 
visiting  the  city  that  bears  the  name  of  the  great  apostle  was 
to  pay  my  respects  to  its  archbishop,  Monsignor  Ireland,  the 
most  eloquent  of  the  prelates  who  in  these  days  are  turning 
the  thought  of  the  Church  toward  social  problems.  There  is 
something  of  Savonarola  in  the  long,  rugged  face  of  this  priest, 
who  finds  in  every  kind  of  assembly  an  opportunity  for  giving 
the  word  of  life  to  the  people.  He  said  to  me  one  day :  — 

"The  Americans  have  this  advantage :  that  people  are  never 
surprised  to  see  us  in  any  sort  of  gathering.  You  could  hardly 
picture  to  yourself  Monsignor  of  Paris  at  a  banquet  of  the 
city  drainage  department.  It  would  be  in  staying  away  that  I 
should  cause  surprise.  Such  things  give  us  many  opportuni 
ties  for  making  Catholicism  understood." 

And  whatever  the  form  under  which  Catholicism  presents 
itself,  with  whatever  large  magnificence  of  character,  one  needs 
still  to  have  read  one  of  his  sermons  in  order  to  understand  — 
to  feel,  rather  —  its  vast  significance.  "  The  Church  and  the 
age !  the  age  and  the  Church !  Let  us  bring  them  together  in 
closest  union.  Their  pulses  beat  in  unison.  The  God  of 
humanity  is  working  in  the  age :  the  God  of  revelation  is  work 
ing  in  the  Church.  It  is  the  same  God  and  the  same  spirit." 

And  again :  "  What !  our  Church,  the  Church  of  the  Hying 


BUSINESS   MEN   AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  139 

God,  the  Church  of  ten  thousand  victories  over  heathens  and 
barbarians,  over  false  philosophies  and  heresies,  over  defiant 
kings  and  turbulent  peoples, —  the  great,  charitable,  liberal 
Church,  athirst  for  virtue,  ahungered  for  justice, — •shall  she 
quail  before  the  nineteenth  century?  Shall  she  fear  any 
century  whatsoever?  " 

What  words !  and  those  who  are  Christians  by  desire,  as  I 
am,  whose  name  is  legion,  how  shall  they  not  thrill  to  hear 
them  sounding  forth  over  the  modern  world  and  over  their 
own  hearts?  The  time  has  come  when  Christianity  must 
accept  all  of  Science  and  all  of  Democracy,  under  penalty  of 
seeing  herself  forsaken  by  too  many  souls.  She  must  perforce 
construct  a  channel  for  these  two  springs,  and  who  knows 
whether  the  archbishop  of  St.  Paul  is  not  the  workman  pre 
destined  to  this  task?  Who  knows  whether  he  is  not  some  day 
to  utter  words  like  these  from  a  yet  higher  place?  There  \s 
already  one  American  cardinal,  and  why  should  there  not  soon 
be  two?  Why  should  not  a  pope  issue  from  this  free  nation, 
in  which  the  heads  of  the  Church  have  become  what  the  first 
apostles  were  —  men  close  to  the  heart  of  the  people,  to  those 
humble  hearts  in  which  so  many  irrepressible  ideas  are  now 
fermenting?  These  people  believe  their  ideas  to  be  con 
trary  to  the  teachings  of  Christ.  Prove  to  them,  prove  to  us, 
that  they  are  not  so,  and  that  we  may  all  retain  the  Ideal  by 
which  our  fathers  lived,  without  sacrificing  any  of  those  ideals 
which  throb  in  us!  What  a  work  for  a  fisher  of  souls  of  this 
great  race,  and  how  this  modern  world,  so  sick  of  the  nega 
tions  that  vex  its  incomplete  knowledge,  will  spring  to  meet 
the  Church  when  many  of  its  priests  speak  the  language  that 
this  one  speaks !  In  the  shipwreck  of  European  civilization, 
in  the  tide  of  barbarity  which  militarism  and  socialism  are 
bringing  upon  it,  here  is  the  light  toward  which  to  steer.  It 
will  not  be  a  small  part  of  this  country's  glory  that  this  guid 
ing  light  was  kindled  here. 


140  OUTRE-MER 

I  was  destined  to  meet  the  archbishop  later,  in  New  York, 
and  receive  the  same  impression  of  his  person  that  his  ser 
mons  had  made  upon  me.  This  time,  while  I  was  on  the 
way  to  St.  Paul  to  seek  him,  in  the  modest  "  office  "  which 
he  occupies  under  the  shadow  of  his  cathedral,  he  was  at  Bal 
timore,  delivering  one  of  his  fiery  harangues  at  Cardinal  Gib- 
bons's  jubilee.  Still  I  did  not  regret  the  long  excursion  —  I 
call  it  long,  in  memory  of  my  French  habits.  Fourteen  hours 
in  a  railway  car  do  not  count  in  America.  I  was  able  to  feast 
my  eyes,  during  this  long  journey,  with  the  sight  of  the  most 
psychological  landscape  which  I  have  seen  in  my  wandering 
life;  a  "business"  landscape,  if  one  may  so  speak,  so  entirely 
has  the  imprint  of  speculation  been  stamped  upon  all  the 
banks  of  the  Mississippi,  the  river  celebrated  by  Chateau 
briand  and  Longfellow. 

American  energy  has  made  this  vast  watercourse  the  natural 
vehicle  of  an  enormous  traffic.  The  "  Father  of  Waters  "  has 
become  a  good-natured  and  docile  servant,  indefatigably 
transporting  the  logs  cut  far  away  to  the  North,  beyond  St. 
Paul  and  Minneapolis,  by  woodmen  who  have  the  large  blue 
eyes  and  blond  rosy  faces  of  good-natured  giants.  They  are 
immigrants  from  Sweden  and  Norway,  who  have  come,  to  the 
number  of  six  hundred  thousand,  in  the  last  ten  years ! 

Great  rafts  of  huge  tree-trunks  glide  along  with  the  flowing 
water,  each  one  marked  with  a  colored  sign,  which  tells  its 
destination.  The  water,  by  turns  green  and  transparent  or 
muddy  and  yellow,  bears  upon  its  bosom  so  many  islands  that 
you  can  never  distinguish  the  other  shore.  One  side  of  the 
stream  is  furrowed  with  lines  of  towboats,  which  are  indefat 
igably  and  incessantly  hastening  to  transport  the  cattle  and 
grain  of  this  mysterious,  inexhaustible  West.  Yet  it  must  one 
day  be  exhausted,  and  one  asks  oneself  what  will  become  of 
this  people  when  they  no  longer  have  this  immense  reservoir 
to  draw  from. 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  141 

Meantime  it  was  a  scene  of  extraordinary  activity,  even 
after  Chicago  and  New  York.  The  private  car  in  which  we 
travelled  had  almost  immediately  been  given  its  special 
engine.  The  little  extra  train  was  perpetually  obliged  to 
switch  off  to  let  the  regular  trains  pass  by, —  cattle  trains 
almost  exclusively.  Our  car,  which  is  that  used  by  the  pres 
ident  of  the  road  on  his  travels,  is  not  ordered  with  special 
luxury,  although,  with  its  two  sleeping-rooms,  drawing-room, 
dining-room,  kitchen,  and  bath,  it  is  a  veritable  house  on 
wheels,  in  which  you  might  pass  weeks  and  hardly  know 
that  you  were  travelling.  For  that  matter,  how  many  people 
never  travel  in  any  other  way !  While  at  Newport,  I  heard  a 
young  woman  planning  a  similar  journey.  She  was  to  take 
her  guests  in  her  private  car,  and  her  sole  regret  was  that  the 
station  at  Chicago  was  too  noisy  for  a  long  sojourn.  The 
chief  object  of  having  a  private  car  is  the  avoidance  of  hotels. 
If,  in  the  course  of  one  of  these  fifteen  hundred  mile  journeys, 
the  inhabitant  of  the  private  car  happens  to  fall  ill,  a  halt  is 
called  until  he  gets  well.  This  is  the  case  with  a  politician 
of  my  acquaintance,  whom  his  doctor  is  treating  for  typhoid 
fever,  in  a  car  of  this  kind,  temporarily  shunted  on  one  of 
the  side  tracks  of  some  small  Colorado  town.  Orders  have 
been  given  for  the  engines  not  to  whistle  when  they  approach 
the  place.  Private  cars  are  so  numerous  that  such  an  incident 
passes  without  notice. 

The  car  in  which  I  am  travelling  is  a  sort  of  office  on 
wheels,  intended  to  facilitate  the  labors  of  the  president  and 
directors,  who  desire  to  see  with  their  own  eyes  how  things 
are  going  on  their  road.  Here  again  I  perceive  the  same 
identification  of  the  great  business  enterprises  of  America, 
with  certain  individuals,  which  I  had  already  observed  in  the 
case  of  the  newspapers.  Almost  all  the  great  railroads,  like 
this  one,  are  under  the  control  of  a  very  small  number  of 
individuals.  In  certain  cases  a  single  man  owns  the  majority 


142  OUTRE-MER 

of  the  stock.  In  other  cases,  the  entire  stock  is  divided  be 
tween  four  or  five  capitalists.  At  other  times,  the  interests 
represented  by  a  group  of  capitalists  are  so  great  that  the 
remainder  of  the  stockholders  prefer  to  leave  them  entirely 
free  in  the  direction  of  the  enterprise.  Hence  results  that 
character  of  autocracy  in  directing  boards,  which  Mr.  Bryce 
so  justly  pointed  out  as  the  unique  feature  of  American  rail 
ways.  Those  who  manage  them  are  their  absolute  masters. 

The  necessity  of  direct  supervision  is  another  consequence 
of  this  state  of  things.  For  that  matter,  competition  is  too 
fierce  to  admit  of  that  anonymity  of  routine  administration  of 
which  old  Europe  is  so  fond.  An  American  railway  represents 
too  many  living  interests.  It  is  not  merely  a  more  rapid 
means  of  communication,  side  by  side  with  roads  and  canals, 
for  example.  In  nearly  all  the  States  it  is  the  only  means  of 
communication. 

It  not  only  runs  between  two  existing  cities,  connecting 
them  by  a  shorter  line,  it  is  itself  the  creator  of  cities.  Be 
tween  Chicago  and  St.  Paul  a  score  of  them  have  sprung  into 
existence,  of  which  the  station  was  the  natal  germ.  Stores 
were  opened  for  the  benefit  of  the  employees,  then  other  shops 
for  the  benefit  of  the  first  shopkeepers.  If  there  is  a  mine  in 
the  neighborhood,  or  the  hope  of  a  mine,  grazing,  or  the  pos 
sibility  of  grazing,  immigrants  come  in  flocks.  If  any  natural 
feature,  such  as  a  waterfall,  permits  -a  factory,  industries  are 
established.  Minneapolis  had  no  other  origin.  The  railway 
passed  the  place.  The  falls  of  the  Mississippi  lent  themselves 
to  a  series  of  incomparable  mills,  and  this  was  the  starting- 
point  of  one  of  the  future  capitals  of  the  world. 

One  must  not  weary  of  the  statistics  which,  as  it  were,  make 
evident  this  astounding  productiveness.  Minneapolis,  liter 
ally  founded  but  yesterday,  in  which  no  man  now  forty  years 
old  can  have  been  born,  occupies  to-day,  according  to  popu 
lation,  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-first  place  among  the  cities 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  143 

of  the  whole  world.  It  follows  immediately  after  the  Hague, 
standing  before  Trieste  or  Toulouse  or  Seville  or  Genoa  or 
Florence  or  Venice  or  Havre  or  Bologna  or  Rouen  or  Stras- 
burg. 

It  is  not  merely  a  fantastic  paradox  that  brings  these  antique 
names  into  juxtaposition  with  this  name  so  barbaric  in  origin 

—  it  is  derived  from   a   Greek  and   a   Sioux  word,  and   so 
symbolical.     A  total  rearrangement  of  the  scheme  of  history 
is  shown  in  such  unlooked-for  displacements  of  the  centres 
of   human   activity.     If  we  had   not  suffered  the  extinction 
of  our  sense  of  the  mystery  which  is  hidden  in  all  reality, — 
even  in  coarse  and  vulgar  reality,  when  it  is  fruitful  to  such 
a  degree  as  this, — we  should   recognize   in  it  one  of   the 
miracles  of  an  epoch  in  which  nothing  except  the  perspec 
tive  of  age  is  wanting  to  thrill  us  through  with  admiration ! 

To  the  business  man,  the  unconscious  worker  of  this  mira 
cle,  the  establishment  of  a  railway  is  simply  a  question  of 
speculation.  According  as  these  seeds  of  cities,  scattered 
thus  from  the  funnel  of  an  engine  with  the  cinders  and  the 
sparks,  spring  up  or  prove  abortive,  the  surrounding  district 
will  bring  in  millions  of  dollars  or  nothing.  In  most  cases 
the  company  has  received  its  lands  free,  without  laying  out 
a  cent.  Thus  Congress  granted  thirteen  millions  of  acres  to 
the  Union  Pacific,  six  millions  to  the  Kansas  Pacific,  twelve 
millions  to  the  Central  Pacific,  forty-seven  millions  to  the 
Northern  Pacific,  forty-two  millions  to  the  Atlantic  and  Pa 
cific.  Whatever  these  lands  may  become  worth,  so  much  will 
the  railroad  be  worth.  It  makes  them  fruitful,  and  they  en 
rich  it  in  return.  It  overlays  them  with  an  alluvium  of 
humanity,  and  this  will  tenfold,  a  hundredfold,  enhance  their 
value  to  it. 

Figures  like  these  multiply  themselves  in  the  minds  of  the 
"magnates"  —  so  the  great  "railroad  men  "  are  called  here 

—  as  they  look  abroad  from  their  private  cars.     They  see  a 


144  OUTRE-MER 

new  city  blocking  itself  out,  pushing  out  in  lines  of  cheap 
wooden  houses,  brought  out  in  numbered  sections  and  set 
down  on  the  surface  of  the  ground.  They  ask  themselves  how 
and  when  this  embryo  will  come  to  life,  grow,  develop  itself; 
and  then  they  return  to  the  comfort  of  the  "rockers  "  of  their 
moving  drawing-rooms,  colossal  plans  seething  in  their  minds 
the  while.  Each  one  of  them  is  accustomed  to  a  business 
sphere  as  wide  as  that  of  a  cabinet  minister.  He  has  already 
made  cities;  he  has  made  vast  regions.  All  the  qualities  of  a 
great  diplomatist  have  been  necessary  that  he  should  carry  on 
the  struggle,  to-day  against  a  rival  company,  to-morrow  against 
the  governor  of  a  State.  He  has  conducted  battles,  formed 
leagues.  For  business  to  go  on  as  it  does  he  must  needs  have 
marshalled  thousands  of  men  into  ranks,  chosen  the  most 
able  among  them,  commanded  them  as  Napoleon  commanded 
his  officers  and  soldiers. 

It  is  a  power  by  no  means  decorative  and  honorary, 
but  real,  active,  working,  with  an  immediate  responsibility 
held  in  check  by  success  or  the  want  of  success.  These 
men  are  princes  in  the  feudal  sense  of  the  word,  and  they 
may  generally  pride  themselves  on  having  conquered  their 
principality  for  themselves.  They  can  look  back  twenty  years 
and  see  themselves  small  shopkeepers,  coal-dealers,  hotel  ser 
vants,  brakemen.  Such  a  life  has  its  poetry, —  not  indeed 
that  which  poets  have  sung,  but  poetry  all  the  same, —  and  it 
has  its  beauty,  of  the  kind  that  Balzac  would  have  loved. 

The  locomotive  keeps  on  its  way  while  these  reflections 
beset  me,  and  the  landscape  unrolls  before  our  eyes.  Re 
mains  of  forests  border  the  Mississippi,  brilliant  now  with 
the  hues  of  autumn.  The  magnificence  of  the  red  tones,  their 
depth,  their  solidity,  almost  warm  the  heart.  Once,  in  the 
twilight,  a  part  of  the  forest  was  burning  upon  the  horizon. 
A  colossal  flame  curled  up,  illumining  a  range  of  mountains, 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  145 

while  the  waters  of  the  river,  that  reflected  the  sunset  sky, 
became  adorable  with  rose  and  violet.  -  For  a  few  moments 
invincible  nature  has  its  revenge  and  abolishes  industry.  In 
the  light  of  this  suddenly  transfigured  landscape,  I  picture  to 
myself  what  this  part  of  America  must  have  been  fifty  years 
ago,  when  trappers  and  Indians  were  in  conflict  on  these  fields 
and  in  the  woods  along  this  river,  which  Longfellow  has 
sung:  — 

"  Men  whose  lives  glided  on  like  rivers  that  water  the  woodlands, 
Darkened  by  shadows  of  earth,  but  reflecting  the  image  of  heaven." 

It  is  in  such  scenes  as  this  that  one  should  read  the  now 
old-fashioned  romances  of  Fenimore  Cooper,  which  in  our 
youth  charmed  us  all,  beyond  the  seas.  I  have  just  reread  one 
of  the  most  celebrated,  The  Pathfinder.  Its  style  is  in 
different,  the  plot  is  constructed  of  childishly  improbable 
events.  The  characters  lack  analysis  and  depth.  And  yet 
the  book  possesses  the  first  of  all  the  virtues  of  a  romance, — • 
credibility.  This  is  due,  in  spite  of  its  faults,  to  the  evident 
good  faith  with  which  the  various  characters  are  drawn,  es 
pecially  that  of  the  guide,  Leather-Stocking,  who  has  passed 
into  legend  even  in  Europe. 

Under  all  the  weaknesses  of  style  and  composition,  one 
feels,  as  in  the  Scottish  chronicles  of  Walter  Scott,  the  reality 
of  local  traditions  collected  at  their  very  source.  These 
things  cannot  be  imitated,  and  they  never  grow  old.  Behind 
the  imaginary  story  you  perceive  nature  as  it  once  was  and 
the  American  of  the  last  century,  on  the  eve  of  the  War  of 
Independence,  living  all  in  the  moral  domain,  with  none  of 
the  industrialism  which  now  reigns  over  the  whole  scene. 

That  was  a  unique  period,  when  the  Puritan  and  this  wild 
nature  came  in  contact,  and  its  real  hero  was  Washington. 
England  was  close  at  hand,  and  the  blood  of  its  sons,  emi 
grants  to  this  new  continent,  had  not  undergone  the  prodig- 


146  OUTRE-MER 

ious  intermingling  which  has  now  transformed  it.  Cooper's 
romances  show  the  English  rigidity  of  the  American  of  that 
day,  and  they  also  show  the  strenuousness  of  the  war  with  the 
Indians,  side  by  side  with  the  marvellous  animal  wealth  of  the 
country  now  so  despoiled  of  its  large  and  small  game.  They 
show  the  beginnings  of  the  struggle  with  nature,  which  has 
now  been  not  only  conquered,  but  violated  and  brutalized. 

The  reading  of  these  books  shows  that  the  United  States  had 
'already  exhausted  an  entire  civilization  —  that  of  the  pioneers 
and  hunters  —  before  producing  that  of  to-day.  This  new  \ 
nation  has  lived  more  in  its  one  hundred  years  than  all  Europe  , 
since  the  Renascence.  Between  the  social  condition  de 
scribed  by  this  Pathfinder,  and  that  of  which  I  am  trying 
to  distinguish  a  few  elements,  there  is  assuredly  more  differ 
ence  than  between  the  France  of  the  seventeenth  century  and 
that  of  our  day,  notwithstanding  the  upheavals  of  our  Revo 
lution.  The  plasticity  of  this  singular  country  is  such  that 
we  may  predict  as  great  differences  between  the  civilization 
of  this  year  of  the  Chicago  Exposition  and  that  of  1993;  only 
the  sunset,  the  water  of  the  river,  and  the  sky  will  have  re 
mained  the  same  as  to-night  and  as  a  hundred  years  ago.  The 
same  stars  will  flash  out  overhead,  and  the  same  moon  will 
rise,  bathing  the  vast,  pale  river  and  the  dark  forests,  But 
will  it  still  light  up  files  of  trains  such  as  rush  past  ours,  fly 
ing  eastward,  carrying  cattle  and  wheat,  wheat  and  cattle, — 
and  money,  always  and  ever  money,  to  swell  the  enormous 
fortunes  destined  some  day  to  be  shed  abroad  in  the  form  of 
dowry  over  some  ruined  palace  of  Italy,  some  impoverished 
historic  castle  of  England  or  of  France? 

St.  Paul,  where  I  arrive  on  a  Sunday  morning,  is  a  huge 
chaotic  city,  in  part  composed  of  the  same  wooden  houses 
squat  upon  the  ground  which  are  found  in  the  infant  cities 
along  the  railway.  But  along  a  sort  of  macadamized  terrace 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  147 

which  overlooks  the  Mississippi,  stand  out  a  succession  of 
beautiful  stone  houses,  not  very  high,  of  good  architecture. 
They  form  a  whole  street  of  private  houses,  like  those  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Hyde  Park  or  the  Avenue  du  Bois. 

The  mere  exterior  of  these  houses  betrays  in  the  men  who 
built  them,  who  are  all  business  men  of  this  place,  that  habit 
of  ostentatious  expenditure  that  seems  to  be  so  contrary  to  the 
greed  for  wealth  everywhere  stamped  upon  the  hard  surface  of 
this  country.  The  contradiction  is  only  apparent.  The 
American  loves  to  "make  a  dollar,"  as  they  say;  but  he  is  not 
tenacious  of  it.  What  he  most  cares  for  in  the  conquest  of 
wealth  is  the  excitement  of  activity,  self-affirmation,  and  he 
affirms  himself  quite  as  much,  if  not  more,  by  the  lavish 
ostentation  of  his  expenditure. 

This  ostentation  is  sometimes  very  barbaric.  It  is  often 
very  intelligent.  Of  this  I  have  convinced  myself  by  a  visit 
to  one  of  the  houses  on  "Summit  Avenue,"  the  elegant  street 
of  this  rough-hewn  St.  Paul.  The  gallery  of  paintings  which 
it  contains  is  mentioned  in  the  guide-books.  It  belongs  to 
the  president  of  one  of  the  great  Western  railways,  a  "  self- 
made  man,"  if  ever  there  was  one.  All  who  knew  him  twenty- 
five  years  ago  remember  him  as  a  small  commercial  employee. 
After  that  he  went  into  the  selling  of  coal,  and  the  freighting 
of  boats.  The  latter  enterprise  made  him  acquainted  de  visu 
with  the  wealth  of  Montana  and  North  Dakota.  A  railway 
which  had  been  begun  in  these  regions  was  on  the  point  of 
failure.  He  bought  the  ruined  line.  To-day,  thanks  to  con 
tracts  that  he  was  wise  enough  to  make,  by  a  series  of  trans 
shipments,  this  line  has  a  through  service  from  Buffalo  to 
Japan.  This  is  the  finished  type  of  a  great  American  busi 
ness  enterprise,  with  its  foundations  laid  in  minute  personal 
experience  and  its  results  expanded  by  bold  combinations  to 
the  verge  of  unreality. 

The  interior  appointments  of  this  man's  house  are  not  less 


148  OUTRE-MER 

typical.  Pictures,  pictures  everywhere.  Corots  of  the  highest 
beauty,  among  others  the  Biblis  which  figured  at  the  Secretan 
sale,  Troyons,  Decamps,  a  colossal  Courbet,  the  Convulsion- 
naires  of  Delacroix,  and  a  view  of  the  coast  of  Morocco,  before 
which  I  stood  long,  as  in  a  dream.  I  saw  this  canvas  years 
ago.  I  have  sought  for  it  since  in  hundreds  of  public  and 
private  museums,  finding  no  book  which  could  inform  me  who 
was  its  present  possessor,  and  I  find  it  here ! 

It  is  a  little  narrow  beach,  a  rim  of  pebbly  strand  at  the 
foot  of  a  steep  cliff.  Some  Moors  are  rapidly  making  off  with 
a  large  bark.  The  village,  a  nest  of  pirates,  shows  white, 
high  up  in  a  cleft  of  the  hill.  This  collection  of  hovels 
huddled  in  this  lonely  cranny,  the  wildness  of  the  beach,  the 
haste  of  the  sailors,  the  freedom  of  the  great  sea,  intensely 
blue  under  a  burning  sun,  all  speak  of  adventure,  surprise, 
danger.  There  is  realism  and  romanticism,  brilliant  color 
and  dramatic  action  in  this  picture  by  a  thoughtful  and 
enthusiastic  artist,  always  seeking  for  a  subject  of  complex 
beauty,  in  which  the  vagueness  of  a  tragic  mystery  should  be 
mingled  with  splendor  of  execution. 

What  ground  has  this  canvas  covered  between  the  painter's 
studio  and  the  gallery  of  a  millionaire  of  the  Western  frontier ! 
So  I  saw  in  Baltimore,  in  the  collection  of  the  "magnate  "  of 
another  railroad,  the  complete  series  of  Barye  pictures,  a 
"Christ  asleep  in  the  storm"  by  Delacroix,  with  an  amazing 
marine  piece,  a  sea-green  surf,  wild  and  boisterous,  under 
a  sky  livid  with  violet  hues.  And  Fromentins  and  Daubignys, 
other  Corots,  Troyons,  Decamps,  Bonnats,  —  all  the  glory  of 
France!  What  sentiment  impels  these  wealthy  speculators 
to  gather  into  their  own  homes  art  treasures  most  foreign 
to  all  that  has  been  the  business  and  passion  of  their  whole 
life? 

I  seem  to  discern  here,  first  of  all,  traces  of  that  dr^amjDf 
culture,  that  longing  for  intellectual  leisure,  which  always 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  149 

impresses  me  in  persons  thus  saturated  with  practical  energy. 
I  also  recognize  in  it  a  purpose  of  good  citizenship.  They 
have  a  very  particular  sort  of  love  for  the  city  in  which  they 
live,  which  they  have  seen  growing  up,  which  they  have  some 
times  even  seen  born,  and  which  they  desire  to  see  in  posses 
sion  of  all  excellent  things.  A  museum  is  such  a  thing,  and 
they  give  her  one  in  their  own  house.  Almost  always  the 
wills  of  these  great  men  contain  a  clause  which  proves  how 
deep  and  widespread  is  the  idea  that  "millions"  bring  civic 
duty  in  their  train.  They  give  five  hundred  thousand  dollars 
to  endow  a  library,  a  university,  a  museum  for  their  city. 
When  such  a  one  dies  without  having  taken  steps  of  this  kind, 
universal  blame  overshadows  his  memory. 

For  this  reason  every  one  of  these  industrial  towns  is  proud 
of  its  millionaires.  The  most  ignorant  coachman  will  point 
you  to  their  houses,  give  you  the  amount  of  their  fortunes, 
call  them  by  their  nicknames.  It  is  understood  that  munici 
pal  solidarity  unites  these  potentates  of  the  dollar  to  their 
fellow-citizens  of  their  own  city.  In  fact,  this  unity  o'  inter 
ests  shows  itself  daily,  materially.  The  same  Mr.  Chauncey 
Depew  whose  remarks  I  have  before  quoted  said  to  a  reporter 
these  significant  words :  — 

"  A  railway  president  in  the  United  States  is  a  great  servant 
ot  the  people.  He  has  under  his  orders  twenty  or  thirty 
thousand  men,  who  represent  a  hundred  thousand,  sometimes 
two  hundred  thousand  mouths  to  fill;  he  holds  in  his  hands 
not  merely  the  physical  well-being,  but  the  mental  and  moral 
well-being  of  this  multitude.  He  cannot  do  everything,  nor 
content  everybody.  But  he  can  do  much,  and  when  he  does 
his  best  you  will  not  find  another  man  in  a  '  prominent  posi 
tion  '  who  does  more  for  the  comfort  and  good  citizenship 
of  large  communities." 

This  warm  civic  ardor  is  one  of  the  virtues  of  the  American 
business  man  of  which  we  are  least  aware.  With  reservations 


150  OUTRE-MER 

on  the  side  of  truth  and  that  of  "humbug,"  I  believe  it  to 
be  the  most  sincere. 

With  eyes  dazzled  by  the  luminous  poetry  of  Delacroix's 
picture,  I  had  some  difficulty,  on  the  way  from  St.  Paul  to 
Minneapolis,  in  discerning  the  meaning  of  the  landscape 
which  lies  between  the  two  cities.  It  is,  however,  most 
expressive.  The  few  miles  of  ground  which  separate  them 
are  divided  off  into  nearly  equal  lots,  and  everywhere  you  may 
see  the  inscription  "For  Sale,"  indefinitely  multiplied.  In 
fifty  years  the  suburbs  of  the  "Twin  Cities  of  the  West" — 
as  they  call  them  here  —  will  meet. 

Soon  the  wooden  houses  begin  to  appear,  then  brick  ones. 
This  is  Minneapolis.  Although  the  earlier  houses  are  scat 
tered,  like  farms  upon  a  mountain  side,  the  streets  are  already 
laid  out  and  numbered.  An  electric  tramway  serves  these 
districts,  which,  notwithstanding  the  infrequent  houses,  con 
form  to  the  ideal  plan.  It  is  like  a  design  of  a  colossal  city 
traced  beforehand  on  the  very  ground,  planned,  imagined, 
estimated  rather,  its  future  needs  to  be  served  by  this  electri 
city.  The  sewers  are  dug,  the  fountains  are  playing,  the 
ground  is  drained  It  lacks  only  inhabitants. 

Of  these,  however,  there  are  a  hundred  and  sixty-five  thou 
sand  in  the  built-up  quarters,  which  form  but  a  very  small 
portion  of  the  city  prospected  by  the  business  men  of  Minne 
apolis.  Chicago  counts  more  than  a  million  souls,  and  they 
have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  their  city  will  outrank 
Chicago.  They  have  taken  precautions  to  that  end,  and  have 
bought  all  that  they  can  buy  of  the  adjoining  land,  dividing  it 
up  for  sale  lot  by  lot.  They  have  given  the  vital  organ  to 
these  yet-to-be-built  suburbs,  —  the  facility  of  rapid  transit, 
which  permits  each  workingman  to  have  his  little  house, —  and 
they  are  waiting,  with  a  strength  of  hope  so  peculiarly  Ameri 
can,  occupied  meanwhile  with  other  speculations,  which  will 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  151 

compensate  them  for  the  failure  of  this  one,  in  the  event  —  to 
them  improbable  —  of  this  one  making  shipwreck. 

One  of  the  great  speculators  of  Minneapolis,  he  perhaps 
who  from  the  first  day  has  most  strongly  believed  in  the  future 
of  this  city,  takes  me  in  his  electric  car  —  a  private  electric 
car;  where  else  shall  we  find  a  whim  like  this?  He  proposes 
to  show  me  that  he  and  his  friends  have  foreseen  not  merely 
the  material  greatness  of  Minneapolis,  but  have  thought  of  its 
artistic  life. 

The  car  slips  along  the  wire  with  frightful  speed.  It  has 
not  to  stop  for  passengers.  We  have  left  the  built-up  quar 
ters,  and  almost  immediately  we  pass  the  districts  yet  to  be 
built,  with  their  imaginary  streets,  and  their  placards  of  "  For 
Sale  "  erected  on  posts.  These  placards  are  so  numerous  that 
the  suburb  resembles  the  beds  of  a  botanic  garden  destined 
for  the  inhabitants  of  Brobdingnag.  The  car  now  skirts  a 
diminutive  lake,  whose  bluish  waters  shimmer  between  slim 
young  trees.  They  have  cut  down,  destroyed,  burned,  the 
primitive  forest,  and  this  timid  attempt  at  replantation  seems 
all  the  more  to  denude  the  landscape. 

We  reach  a  bit  of  better  preserved  woodland,  which  forms 
the  green  border  of  a  second  lake.  On  the  shore  is  one  of 
the  most  singular  music  halls  that  it  has  ever  been  given  me 
to  see.  Benches  rise  up  in  tiers,  facing  the  lake.  Above 
they  are  divided  into  boxes;  below  they  form  a  uniform 
parterre.  Wooden  tables  in  these  boxes  and  on  the  parterre 
remind  me  that  in  Minneapolis  the  principal  immigration  is 
Germanic.  This  place  is  evidently  arranged  for  the  folk  of 
the  beer  garden, —  Germans,  Swiss,  Danes,  Norwegians.  A 
huge  raft  is  moored  opposite  the  theatre,  bearing  a  rostrum  for 
the  orchestra.  Concerts  are  given  here  on  fine  summer  nights, 
and  when  the  public  requests  it  the  raft  puts  out  into  the 
lake,  to  add  the  charm  of  distance  to  the  pieces  played.  This 
democratic  adaptation  of  the  dreams  of  King  Louis  of  Bavaria 


152  OUTRE-MER 

costs  the  humble  folk  who  enjoy  it  ten  cents  for  the  tramway 
and  twenty-five  cents  for  entrance  —  no  doubt  "with  ex 
penses,"  as  the  cafe-concert  advertisements  say! 

All  America  shows  in  this  place.  The  orchestra  is  composed 
of  good  artists,  who  will  be  better  from  year  to  year  with  the 
increasing  wealth  of  the  city.  The  view  is  exquisite  on  this 
autumnal  morning,  veiled  in  haze  above  the  yellowing  trees  and 
the  violet  water.  What  must  it  be  by  moonlight,  on  the  soft 
nights  of  June?  The  idea  is  a  fine  one,  a  dainty  caprice  of 
popular  enjoyment.  And  it  all  has  for  its  first  principle  a  tram 
way  speculation,  which  in  turn  rests  on  a  speculation  in  land ! 

The  most  humble  realism,  most  devoted  to  the  minute 
observation  of  facts,  joined  to  an  audacity  of  imagination 
which  never  flinches,  which  grafts  projects  upon  projects, 
which  continually  inflates  enterprises  already  enormous,  which 
rises  to  more  and  more  colossal  combinations, —  the  most 
ardent,  most  implacable  individualism,  as  of  a  nobler  sort  of 
beast  of  prey,  devouring  all  thlTlife  around  it, —  or,  if  you 
will,  the  tremendous  rush  of  an  overflowing  river,  absorbing 
all  waters,  inundating  all  lands,  sweeping  over  a  country  rav 
aged  by  its  insatiable  floods;  and  with  all  this  a  generosity 
that  never  reckons,  a  magnanimity  of  civic  passion  that  lav 
ishes  millions  in  disinterested  works,  that  expends  itself  in 
tireless  sacrifices  for  the  common  country;  a  plebeianism  of 
most  recent  origin,  a  modesty,  often  a  meanness  of  birth, 
family,  education,  powerless,  it  would  seem,  to  mitigate  the 
necessity  of  bread-winning  toil;  and  with  it  all  the  magnifi 
cence  and  ostentation  of  grand  seigneurs,  a  taste  for  art,  a 
large  understanding  of  intelligent  luxury,  a  natural  facility  in 
the  management  of  the  tremendous  fortunes  acquired  but  yes 
terday;  such  are  the  contradictory  characteristics  which  even 
a  superficial  analysis  discovers  in  the  complex  figure  of  the 
American  business  man. 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  .    153 

Simply  to  note  them  in  this  brief  summary  serves  to  show 
me  that  these  traits  are  also  those  of  the  whole  race,  and  in  the 
lineaments  of  the  potentate  who  reigns  master  over  his  rail 
way,  his  factory,  his  newspaper,  his  mine,  I  recognize  the 
early  colonist,  with  the  moral  lineaments  which  fortune  has 
been  powerless  to  change. 

This  colonist  came  here  a  hundred  years  ago,  fifty  years 
ago,  to  find  a  foothold  in  this  still  new  world,  and  he  has  been 
forced  to  carry  on  the  most  open  struggle,  the  least  softened 
by  social  conventions, —  a  struggle  against  people,  against 
nature,  against  himself.  His  flesh  rebelled  against  the  severi 
ties  of  the  first  years.  The  prairie  was  hostile.  The  neigh 
bors  were  severe,  dangerous,  merciless.  The  necessity  of 
action  forced  the  man  to  observe  and  to  accept  no  ideas  that 
were  not  clear  and  precise.  This  inexorable  education  cured 
him  of  phrases,  formulae,  prejudices,  and  inaccuracies.  So 
much  for  the  realism. 

But  the  colonist's  struggle  had  all  possibilities  before  it. 
Expatriations  of  this  sort  are  not  to  be  explained  without 
something  of  that  madness  of  hope  which  desperate  men  find 
in  themselves  in  supreme  moments,  when  the  whole  soul  faces 
about  under  a  blow  which  leaves  to  it  nothing  of  the  past. 
And  once  at  this  point,  everything  contributed  to  fan  the 
fever  of  hope  in  the  exile's  breast, —  the  incredibly  fertile 
soil,  the  mysterious  gold  and  silver  mines  always  to  be  discov 
ered,  the  prairie,  absurdly  rich  in  game,  the  indestructible 
forests,  and  the  daily  example  of  gigantic  fortunes  amassed  in 
a  few  years.  So  much  for  imagination. 

And  still  the  influx  of  immigrants  continued  to  be  so 
numerous,  the  struggle  for  life  became  so  violent  in  this 
horde  of  adventurers, —  all  men  of  poverty  and  energy, — 
justice  was  executed  in  so  summary  a  fashion,  that  it  was 
necessary  indeed  to  have  recourse  to  Faitstrecht,  that  right 
of  the  fist  which  was  the  principle  of  order  in  the  German 


154  OUTRE-MER 

Middle  Ages.  Lynching  is  its  last  relic.  So  much  for 
individualism. 

On  the  other  hand,  these  same  colonists  found  in  this  severe 
existence  a  renewal  of  their  personality.  They  made  for 
themselves  a  future  that  had  no  past,  and  experienced  a  pas 
sionate  gratitude  to  the  free  country  which  had  permitted  the 
new  beginning.  This  is  the  origin  of  American  patriotism, 
so  different  from  ours.  Tradition  does  not  enter  into  it,  since 
the  men,  except  a  number  so  small  that  it  may  be  counted, 
have  their  traditions  elsewhere.  What  they  love  in  this  new 
country  is  precisely  that  it  is  new.  They  themselves  create 
its  tradition.  They  are  ancestors,  and  they  know  it.  So 
much  for  the  glorification  of  civism. 

Finally,  these  colonists  were  all  plebeians,  or  were  con 
strained  to  become  such,  since  they  must  work  with  their 
hands.  Only,  the  vast  extent  of  their  domains,  the  fact  that 
they  were  dependent  on  no  one,  their  consciousness  of  a  re 
generated  manhood,  the  habit  of  unchecked  liberty  to 
originate,  all  conspired  to  exalt  in  them  that  p^riple  which 
the  humblest  American  born  in  the  country  naturally  mani 
fests. 

Look  well  at  this;  the  business  man  is  no  other  than  this 
colonist,  broadened,  developed,  enlarged.  Never  was  the 
law  of  heredity  more  visible  than  here,  in  this  sublimated 
transposition,  if  one  may  so  speak.  All  the  soul  of  the  pioneer 
of  the  early  days  appears  again  in  the  enterprises  and  caprices 
of  these  millionaires;  and  as  the  same  soul  continues  to  stir 
in  the  pcci  American  who  has  not  conquered  destiny,  a  moral 
likeness  is  established  between  the  poorest  and  the  most  pros 
perous,  a  close  and  profound  resemblance,  which  makes  the 
true  coLeience  of  this  country.  It  is  by  this  singular  iden 
tity  that  it  remains  always  one,  in  spite  of  many  causes  cease 
lessly  working  to  disintegrate  it. 

These  business  men,  who  are  occupied  with  constructing  a 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS   SCENES  155 

whole  Western  civilization  out  of  entirely  foreign  elements, 
naturally  make  it  in  the  image  of  the  American  character. 
Through  them  the  national  consciousness  projects  itself  in 
towns  and  enterprises  so  entirely  alike  that  travellers  com 
plain  of  it.  They  are  all  agreed  in  reproaching  this  country 
for  its  cruel  monotony.  Some  humorist  or  other  has  compared 
American  things  to  hothouse  strawberries,  big  as  apricots, 
red  as  roses,  and  with  no  taste. 

If  there  is  any  truth  in  this  epigram,  it  is  the  fault  of  the 
business  men.  Applying  to  all  products  everywhere  the  same 
method  of  indefinite  increase,  multiplying  the  workman  by  the 
machine,  continually  substituting  hasty  wholesale  work  for  the 
individual  and  delicate  task,  they  have,  in  fact,  banished 
the  picturesque  from  their  republic.  All  these  great  cities, 
these  great  buildings,  these  great  bridges,  these  great  hotels, 
are  alike.  But  what  we  have  to  ask  of  these  things  is  not  an 
artistic  impression,  but  an  authentic  report  of  the  profound 
forces  of  American  life,  and  this  document  must  be  added  to 
the  others,  to  confirm  and  complete  them. 

The  particular  feature  manifested  by  business  men  in  all 
the  enterprises  of  which  these  cities  and  landscapes  are  the 
rude  symbol,  is  in  fact  the  same  which  the  women  manifest 
in  their  elegance  and  their  culture,  the  same  that  New  York 
society  manifests  in  its  extravagance,  amusements,  conversa 
tion,  that  New  York  streets  manifest  at  a  first  glance, —  a 
feature  so  characteristic  as  to  be  national.  It  is  a  habit, 
unique  and  unvarying,  a  habit  carried  to  such  an  extreme 
as  to  become  the  abuse  of  a  single  human  power, —  that  of 
will.  It  is  obviously  the  very  pivot  of  the  machine,  to 
which  everything  else  is  subordinated.  Observe  some  of 
these  great  business  men,  after  having  closely  studied  their 
work;  you  will  soon  discover  that  even  their  physical  powers, 
usually  very  robust,  are  entirely  bent  in  this  direction. 
Whether  they  are  thirty  years  old,  or  forty,  or  fifty,  their  one 


156  OUTRE-MER 

ideal  is  "hard  work,"  intense  toil,  which  they  demand  of  their 
employees  as  much  as  of  themselves.  I  am  told  that  it  needs 
months  to  train  English  workmen  —  and  they  are  the  toughest 
in  Europe  —  to  the  strenuous  application  habitual  in  Ameri 
can  shops. 

The  employer  is  himself  in  .his  office  from  the  earliest 
morning  hour,  and  does  not  leave  it  until  the  latest  in  the 
afternoon.  Most  generally  his  only  refreshment  during  this 
long  period  is  two  sandwiches  and  half  a  dozen  oysters  from 
a  neighboring  bar.  After  years  of  such  toil  his  constitution, 
however  strong  it  may  be,  is  seriously  undermined.  He  is 
obliged  to  stop.  The  kind  of  rest  which  his  physicians  pre 
scribe  for  him  is  a  sufficient  indication  of  the  nature  and 
intensity  of  his  fatigue.  It  requires  six  months  of  travel, 
usually  by  sea,  to  patch  up  the  overwrought,  almost  shattered, 
machine. 

Those  who  do  not  succumb  carry  the  marks  of  immense 
fatigue  borne  with  immense  spirit.  They  are  giants;  their 
square-built  frames  have  grown  heavy  by  long  sittings  in  their 
offices,  their  faces  are  gray  from  exhausted  vitality.  The 
expression  of  their  countenances  reveals  a  mind  so  continually 
on  the  strain  that  it  can  no  longer  enjoy  recreation. 

Conversing  with  them,  you  find  it  explained  why  the  papers 
are  continually  announcing  the  sudden  death  of  some  million 
aire,  struck  down  in  his  office,  in  a  boat's  cabin,  or  a  railway 
car.  The  words  "heart  disease"  usually  accompany  the 
death  notice;  it  is  a  commentary  that  shows  you  the  human 
machine  utterly  worn  out  by  the  incessant  expenditure  of  ner 
vous  force.  These  manipulators  of  dollars  are,  in  short,  the 
heroes  of  modern  times,  in  whom  the  power  of  attack  and 
resistance  is  analogous,  under  very  different  forms,  to  the 
power  of  attack  and  resistance  of  an  old  soldier  of  the  Em 
peror.  They  die  of  it,  after  having  lived  by  it,  and  having 
lived  by  it  alone. 


BUSINESS   MEN  AND   BUSINESS  SCENES  157 

This  is  the  greatness  and  it  is  the  limit  of  this  civilization. 
Intellectual  life  is  in  the  background,  and  in  the  background 
also  are  the  sentimental  and  even  the  religious  life.  The  life 
of  purpose  has  sapped  all  the  vigor  of  the  individual.  So 
much  is  it  hypertrophied  that  it  seems  sometimes  to  work 
aimlessly  and  in  a  void.  This  is  also  the  defect  of  the  whole 
social  system.  You  feel  everywhere  that  the  Americans  have 
risen  too  superior  to  time,  so  that  by  a  mysterious  law  they 
are  doing  nothing  that  is  destined  to  endure.  All  the  pomp 
of  these  Babel-like  cities  is  destined  to  give  way  to  something 
else.  The  vision  of  this  is  already  foreseen.  These  machines 
are  to  give  place  to  other  machines,  more  simple  or  more 
complicated.  In  ten  years  these  hotels,  with  their  thousand 
pipes,  their  electric  lights,  their  hot  and  cold  water,  their 
swift  elevators,  their  extravagantly  magnificent  furniture,  will 
have  become  "old-fashioned."  Others  will  have  taken  their 
place. 

It  is  thus  with  everything,  from  writing-machines  to  for 
tunes,  and  so  on  indefinitely,  it  would  seem;  unless,  indeed, 
the  America  of  workmen  and  speculators  is  itself  to  pass  away, 
as  the  America  of  the  pioneers  has  done,  and  frenzied  enter 
prise  be  succeeded  by  a  civilization  in  which  the  central  power 
will  be  not  the  conscious  and  calculating  will,  but  instinct, 
habit,  an  inherited  and  disciplined  nature.  This  final  change 
is,  In  any  case,  far  distant.  You  understand  why,  on  study 
ing  a  map  of  the  United  States  and  comparing  the  extent  of 
its  territory  with  the  number  of  its  inhabitants.  Americans 
often  indulge  in  the  justified  pleasantry  of  saying  that  if  all 
France  were  set  down  in  the  midst  of  Texas,  a  good  deal  of 
Texas  would  stick  out  around  the  edges.  It  would  be  proper 
to  add  that  this  immense  Texas  has  not  three  million  inhabi 
tants;  Florida  has  not  four  hundred  thousand,  and  it  takes 
fourteen  hours  by  railway  to  pass  through  it,  from  Lake  Worth 
to  Jacksonville. 


158  OUTRE-MER 

Thirty  out  of  forty  States  are  in  a  like  condition.  This  is 
the  secret  of  this  civilization.  It  has  not  yet  passed  the 
period  of  conquest.  Its  immense  originality  lies  in  this,  that 
its  conquerors  leaped  with  one  bound  to  the  refinement  of  the 
most  advanced  civilization.  A  like  phenomenon  has  not 
elsewhere  been  seen,  and  it  will  never  be  seen  again.  This 
is  the  reason  why  the  leaders  in  this  unique  conquest  —  the 
business  men  —  do  not  resemble  our  brokers,  laborers,  manu 
facturers,  engineers;  the  reason  why  Chicago  is  not  like  Paris, 
or  Minneapolis  like  Florence.  I  love  best  the  cities  of  old 
Europe,  but  I  admire  most  the  business  men  of  the  New 
World.  The  work  which  they  do  by  dint  of  sheer,  unpre 
meditated  resolution  is  not  equal  to  the  work  which  has  been 
elaborated  with  us  for  centuries,  but  the  actual  makers  of  this 
country  are  examples  of  a  more  vigorous  humanity. 


VI 

THE   LOWER   ORDERS 
I.    The  Workingmen 

"BUSINESS  is  the  labor  of  others,"  said  a  socialistic  humor 
ist,  amending  a  celebrated  witticism.  The  epigram  is  only 
half  true  in  the  United  States,  where  the  millionaires  them 
selves  are  overwhelmed  with  work,  quite  as  much  so  as  the 
most  oppressed  operatives  on  their  railroads  or  in  their  mines. 
It  is  so  far  correct,  that  the  conduct  of  these  great  enter 
prises  requires  for  its  first  element  the  toil  of  the  laborer. 
Behind  the  capitalist,  however  intelligent  he  may  be,  however 
active  and  enterprising,  there  stands,  therefore,  the  workingman. 

Premising  that  America  is,  above  all  things,  a  democracy, 
this  very  personage  is  what  constitutes  its  substructure.  If 
the  civilization  of  this  country  is  to  be  changed  again,  as  so 
often  seems  likely  to  be  the  case,  it  will  change  through  the 
workingman,  as  the  France  of  '89,  which  rested  upon  the 
peasant  class,  was  changed  by  the  peasant.  From  time  to 
time,  strikes,  which  in  any  other  country  would  be  called 
civil  wars,  seem  in  fact  to  presage  one  of  those  class  conflicts 
of  which  the  issue  is  never  doubtful.  Ever  since  there  have 
been  barbarians  and  civilized  people,  the  more  wretched  have 
always  vanquished  the  more  fortunate  when  it  came  to  the 
issue  of  battle. 

At  other  times,  and  with  the  exception  of  such  moments  of 
overstrained  feeling,  if  you  talk  with  laboring  men,  you  will 
find  them  evidently  happy  in  their  work,  performing  it  well, 


160  OUTRE-MER 

with  much  of  the  independence  of  free  citizens  in  their 
rugged  faces.  They  visibly  have  the  calmness  of  energy, 
amidst  all  the  to  and  fro  of  pistons,  the  whistling  of  leather 
straps,  the  screeching  of  steam,  the  panting  of  fly-wheels.  The 
expenditure  of  personal  force  is  so  intelligently  economized 
for  them,  so  accurately  supported  by  mechanical  help !  You 
know,  on  the  other  hand,  that  wages  are  much  .higher  than  in 
Europe, —  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  day,  two,  two  and  a  half,  four. 
You  know  with  what  prudential  societies  the  activity  of  these 
people  is  surrounded.  These  societies  are  so  numerous,  so 
well  ordered,  so  ready  to  sustain  the  workman  and  his  family 
in  so  many  circumstances,  from  loss  of  work  to  death !  Thanks 
to  one  of  these  societies  the  man  owns  his  own  house.  Thanks 
to  endowments  of  all  sorts,  the  education  oi  his  children  is 
ensured.  The  tax  of  blood  —  that  monstrous  abuse  of  our 
civilization  —  is  spared  to  him  and  his  sons.  You  return 
again  to  this  thought,  which  has  determined  so  many  emi 
grants  to  leave  all,  that  America  is  the  paradise  of  the  common 
people. 

How  reconcile  two  points  of  view,  both  of  which  are  based 
upon  indisputable  though  radically  contradictory  facts?  You 
turn  the  pages  of  publications  issued  by  working  men  and 
women.  The  same  contradiction  appears  still  more  strikingly. 
In  the  programme  of  one  of  the  associations  that  pass  for 
being  the  most  advanced,  you  read,  "Calling  upon  God  to 
witness  the  rectitude  of  our  intentions."  In  a  sort  of  hymn 
in  honor  of  the  eight-hour  day,  ending  with  the  line 

"  Eight  hours  for  work,  eight  hours  for  rest,  eight  hours  for  what  we  will," 

you  three  times  meet  the  name  of  God,  and  three  times  find 
His  and  Him  printed  with  a  capital  letter.  You  conclude 
therefrom  that  the  natural  desire  for  beneficent  reforms  is 
associated,  in  the  American  workman,  with  a  deep  religious 
instinct,  and  you  decide  that  this  characteristic  fits  in  well 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  161 

with  the  logic  of  the  natural  character.  Wherever  the  dom 
inant  element  of  a  character  is  will,  the  most  highly  developed 
sentiment  is  necessarily  that  of  responsibility,  and  the  relig- 
ous  life  is  its  perfectly  natural  condition. 

Take  up  another  paper,  also  designed  for  workingmen,  and 
brought  to  your  attention  as  typical,  and  to  your  amazement 
you  will  find  declarations  in  the  style  of  the  following :  "  Par 
adise  is  a  dream  invented  by  rogues,  who  wish  to  conceal  their 
crimes  from  their  victims."  "When  the  laborer  perceives 
that  the  other  world,  which  people  are  forever  telling  him 
about,  is  a  mirage,  he  will  knock  at  the  doors  of  the  rich 
thieves,  gun  in  hand,  demanding  his  share  in  the  good  things 
of  life,  and  this  without  delay."  "Religion,  authority,  state, 
—  all  these  idols  were  carved  out  of  the  same  block  of  wood. 
We  will  shatter  them  all." 

What  can  we  think  of  a  social  class  of  whom  such  opposite 
accounts  are  equally  true?  That  is  a  psychological  problem 
far  too  profound  for  me  to  solve.  I  get  a  glimpse  of  at  least 
a  conjecture  which  may  permit  one  to  comprehend  the  co 
existence  of  ideas  so  antithetical  in  the  laboring  classes  of 
America.  Much  has  contributed  to  this  hypothesis, —  pro 
longed  study  of  conditions,  visits  to  factories,  the  reading  of 
a  quantity  of  reports,  visits  to  innumerable  workingmen' s 
homes,  interviews  with  especially  competent  persons.  I  shall 
give  from  among  notes  taken  in  the  course  of  an  inquiry  still 
too  short,  only  those  which  chime  in  with  the  familiar  tone 
of  this  travelling  journal,  which  does  not  aspire  to  be  a  treatise 
on  political  economy. 

Conversations  with  two  of  the  men  who  have  most  efficiently 
pondered  the  problem  of  the  social  future  of  America,  His 
Eminence  Cardinal  Gibbons  and  Monsignor  Ireland,  appear 
to  me  to  have  summed  up  with  authority  and  superior  clear 
ness  the  optimistic  view  of  the  future.  Though  they  occurred 


162  OUTRE-MER 

several  weeks  apart,  I  will  transcribe  them  in  succession,  as 
they  are  complementary  to  one  another. 

All  French  people  know  the  names  of  these  two  apostles, 
thanks  to  the  works  of  M.  de  Meaux  and  M.  Max  Leclerc, 
thanks  also  to  the  Abb£  Klein's  fine  translation  of  a  few 
sermons  preached  by  the  archbishop  of  St.  Paul.  These  two 
prelates  have  been  very  active  workers  in  the  Catholic  propa 
ganda  in  the  United  States,  of  which  I  have  already  spoken. 
A  few  figures  will  permit  us  to  measure  it  more  accurately. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  century  American  Catholics  were 
in  number  about  twenty-five  thousand.  A  bishop  and  some 
thirty  priests  sufficed  for  the  service  of  souls.  To-day  they 
count  more  than  ten  millions  of  members.  Their  churches 
and  seminaries  continually  increase.  They  have  founded  at 
the  gates  of  Washington  a  university  which  assures  to  their 
teaching  all  the  supremacy  of  the  most  modern  knowl 
edge.  Monsignor  Keane  is  its  rector.  One  of  the  grandest 
figures  of  the  dignified  clergy  of  America  is  this  rector,  with 
the  vigorous  countenance  of  the  man  of  action,  with  vibrating 
voice,  gestures  at  times  almost  rigid,  and  eyes  of  flame. 

"All  that  we  have  done,"  he  said  to  me,  "we  have  done 
through  liberty.  We  have  no  relations  with  the  State,  and 
we  get  along  together  very  well.  We  are  paid  by  our  adher 
ents,  and  we  like  that.  If  they  find  us  too  severe,"  he  added, 
"and  undertake  to  make  us  feel  it,  we  support  it  without 
pain  ;  for  we  like  that,  also,  to  do  without  superfluities  and 
display.  When  I  was  bishop  of  Richmond  my  diocese  was 
very  poor.  I  lived  in  two  little  rooms  and  I  was  happy. 
What  we  do  not  like  is  for  the  ministers  of  the  Church  to 
maintain  the  style  of  a  prince,  to  form  a  nobility.  Such  vani 
ties  do  not  become  the  disciples  of  the  Divine  Master." 

Such  sentiments  explain  better  than  any  commentary  why 
the  clergy  have  gained  a  place  against  which  the  efforts  of 
intolerant  fanatics  like  the  A.  P.  A.  cannot  prevail.  This  is 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  163 

the  name  of  an  anti-Catholic  league  recently  formed  here, 
which  calls  itself  the  American  Protective  Association.  Those 
who  compose  it  hate  the  Church  with  that  strange  hatred  so 
common  among  us.  They  well  understand  that  in  the  United 
States  they  must  attack  it  upon  the  ground  of  liberty  itself. 
In  this  method  they  resemble  the  radicals  of  our  country. 
Their  programme  consists  in  representing  Catholicism  as  in 
compatible  with  the  duties  of  the  American  citizen.  They 
cite  an  article  in  the  naturalization  laws,  which  demands 
the  full,  dispassionate  renunciation  of  all  fidelity  to  any 
foreign  sovereign.  They  add :  "  Do  not  Catholics  themselves 
proclaim  themselves  dependants  of  the  Pope,  who  lives  in 
Rome?" 

Neither  the  dangerous  quibble  of  this  reasoning,  which 
affects  to  confound  the  spiritual  and  temporal  realms,  nor  the 
diffusion  by  thousands  of  false  documents,  where  the  vener 
ated  names  of  the  archbishops  of  Baltimore  and  St.  Paul  appear 
at  the  end  of  secret  instructions  drawn  up  with  most  adroit 
perfidy,  nor  the  astute  appeal  to  the  ancient  hostility  to  popery, 
so  lively  in  the  hearts  of  the  descendants  of  the  Puritans, — 
no  stratagem,  in  fact,  has  been  able  to  prevail  against  the 
evident  warmth  of  civic  energy  displayed  by  this  truly  living 
episcopate.  Neither  of  these  prelates  has  missed  a  single 
opportunity  to  serve  the  people,  to  show  himself  a  man  of 
his  time  and  of  his  country.  When  the  association  of  the 
Knights  of  Labor  was  threatened  at  Rome,  Cardinal  Gibbons 
and  Monsignor  Ireland  had  no  hesitation  in  going  thither  at 
once  to  defend  it.  When  the  organizers  of  the  Exposition 
had  the  idea  of  opening  at  Chicago  that  Congress  of  Religions 
which,  in  spite  of  some  unfortunate  charlatanism  in  matters 
of  detail,  will  remain  one  of  the  noble  symbols  of  our  epoch, 
the  same  Cardinal  Gibbons  consented  to  open  it  with  a 
solemn  prayer. 

In  all  circumstances  their  hearts  beat  in  unison  with  the 


164  OUTRE-MER 

heart  of  the  nation.  There  is  no  merit  in  this.  A  constitu 
tion  which  permits  them  to  practise  their  religion  untram 
melled,  to  form  associations  and  possess  property  without 
check,  to  institute  good  works  without  opposition,  and  to 
secure  the  recruitment  of  their  clergy  without  sophistry, — 
what  more  could  they  ask?  With  what  enthusiasm  would  the 
Catholics  of  France  accept  the  suppression  of  the  Concordat 
with  the  budget  of  worship,  under  such  guarantees !  And  then 
the  clergy  in  the  United  States  are  really,  closely,  American. 
The  characteristics  which  distinguish  this  robust  race,  and 
which  I  noted  in  connection  with  society,  as  well  as  with 
business,  are  found  with  the  same  intensity  in  these  bishops 
and  priests.  In  the  first  place,  they  have  realism,  the 
keen  positive  vision  of  the  fact.  Read  the  two  volumes  in 
which  the  cardinal  has  summed  up  Catholic  dogma  for  his 
fellow-citizens,  especially  the  pages  referring  to  divorce. 
They  have  the  hardy  vigor  of  hope,  and  an  enormous  breadth 
of  plan.  Listen  to  the  archbishop  of  St.  Paul :  — 

"We  have  an  admirable  opportunity.  In  a  hundred  years 
America  will  have  four  hundred  millions  of  inhabitants.  Our 
work  is  to  make  this  whole  country  Catholic ! " 

Over  and  above  this  they  have  the  great  national  virtue, 
—  determination. 

"Our  device,"  one  of  them  said,  "is  do  and  dare!" 

We  are  pretty  far  here  from  the  priestly  functionary  whom 
the  State  wraps  in  swaddling-clothes  for  his  protection,  far 
from  those  restrictive  laws  which  forbid  the  religious  orders 
to  own  property,  the  vestries  to  administer  themselves,  the 
clergy  to  recruit  themselves  freely !  Years  ago  I  was  dining 
at  the  same  table  with  Gambetta.  It  was  shortly  after  the 
war,  and  the  Opportunist  chief  was  speaking  of  the  programme 
which  he  should  apply  if  ever  he  arrived  at  power. 

"And  the  separation  of  Church  and  State?"  asked  one  of 
the  guests. 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  165 

"We  should  beware  of  that,"  quickly  answered  he  whom 
his  friends  then  called  "the  tiger."  "It  would  be  necessary 
to  give  too  much  liberty  to  the  Church,  and  she  would  become 
too  strong." 

Here  in  America  I  have  thoroughly  understood  the  signifi 
cance  of  this  remark,  which  has  remained  in  my  memory  from 
early  manhood.  In  uttering  it,  Gambetta  followed  the  true 
Jacobean  and  Caesarean  tradition.  That  this  powerful  states 
man,  the  only  one  which  the  Revolution  of  1870  produced 
among  us,  should  have  thought  thus  in  perfectly  good  faith, 
proves  better  than  many  pages  how  widely  different  may  be 
the  translations  of  the  one  word,  democracy,  into  facts,  laws, 
customs.  A  constitution  is  nothing,  except  through  the  men 
who  obey  it. 

Memory  has  its  freaks.  Going  one  winter's  day  from  Wash 
ington  to  Baltimore,  where  I  was  to  see  Monsignor  Gibbons,  I 
was  taken  possession  of  by  the  picture  of  the  former  dictator 
of  Tours,  because  of  this  remark,  which  had  fallen  from  his 
eloquent  lips  between  two  whiffs  of  a  very  black  cigar,  in  the 
dining-room  of  a  little  basement  of  the  Rue  Linnaeus.  I  was 
asking  myself  what  France  would  have  become  if  that  long- 
winded  orator,  intelligent  and  capable  of  adaptation  and  edu 
cation  as  he  was,  had  made  this  journey  to  America  and  seen 
for  himself  all  that  the  Church  may  yet  to-day  represent  of 
democratic  fecundity  and  broad  popular  instruction  where  it 
is  free. 

Then  a  strangely  different  picture  rose  up  before  my  mind, 
that  of  the  brilliant  and  unfortunate  Edgar  Poe,  who  wrote  his 
"Raven"  half  a  century  ago,  in  the  capital  of  Maryland, 
which  I  see  yonder.  Although  this  poet's  genius  is  spoiled 
for  me  now  by  his  terrible  abuse  of  the  artificial,  by  the  almost 
mechanical  grouping  of  his  thoughts,  his  sensitive  nature 
still  touches  me,  and,  above  all,  his  sorrowful  fate.  I  think  of 


166  OUTRE-MER 

the  ever-new  mystery  of  the  constitution  of  the  soul.  That  of 
the  poet  found  its  principle  of  despair  and  degradation  in  the 
society  where  that  of  the  priest  whom  I  am  shortly  to  meet 
found  its  ample  development.  The  spirituality  of  the  one 
was  its  torture,  the  spirituality  of  the  other  made  its  strength, 
in  the  same  circle  of  the  same  civilization. 

Yet  at  the  first  white  view  of  Baltimore,  as  I  walk  along 
these  streets,  I  feel  that  it  is  indeed,  of  all  American  cities  that 
I  have  seen,  the  one  best  adapted  to  the  dreams  of  poesy.  St. 
Charles  Street,  somewhat  narrow  and  close  between  its  rather 
low,  white  houses,  has  the  charm  of  intimacy.  It  is  quiet 
enough  around  the  square  where  Washington's  monument 
stands,  and  I  recall  the  elegant  Place  Stanislaus  of  Nancy.  I 
have  the  impression,  so  rare  here,  but  which  they  assure  me  I 
shall  have  still  more  strongly  in  Philadelphia,  of  a  corner  in 
some  city  which  has  endured,  which  will  endure.  These  sur 
roundings,  less  temporary,  less  pronounced,  and  more  delicate, 
harmonize  with  my  expectation,  with  the  approach  to  the 
American  primate,  as  the  priests  in  the  University  of  Wash 
ington  described  him  to  me.  A  few  steps  farther  along  the 
quiet  sidewalk  of  this  street,  which  has  no  electric  tramways 
or  cable  cars,  and  I  find  myself  before  a  palace  of  the  same 
simple  style  as  the  neighboring  houses.  The  cupola  of  a 
church  dominates  it.  It  is  the  cardinal's  residence. 

His  Eminence  received  me  in  a  simply  furnished  drawing- 
room,  adorned  with  the  portraits  of  celebrated  priests.  Those 
of  Leo  XIII.  and  Cardinal  Manning  are  engravings,  standing 
on  easels.  Physically,  Monsignor  Gibbons  is  of  the  race  of 
ascetics,  of  whom  it  seems  as  if  mortifications  had  left  just 
enough  flesh  to  support  the  travail  of  the  soul. 

Though  he  is  past  sixty,  he  appears  to  be  hardly  fifty,  so 
erect  is  his  slight  and  supple  figure.  I  had  caught  a  glimpse 
of  him  the  other  day  in  Washington,  in  one  of  the  galleries 
of  the  House,  wearing  no  token  of  his  dignity  except  a  purple 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  167 

skull-cap  on  the  back  of  his  head.  To-day,  in  his  own  house, 
he  wore  a  black  cassock  bordered  with  red,  a  cassock  irre 
proachable  in  appearance,  though  not  entirely  new.  Beneath 
it  his  feet  could  be  seen,  covered  with  thick-soled,  elastic 
boots.  Simplicity  is  everywhere  stamped  upon  the  surround 
ings  of  this  man  of  prayer  and  action, —  upon  him  and  around 
him. 

The  hands  which  project  from  the  sleeves,  with  no  show  of 
linen,  are  thin  and  delicate.  The  face,  at  once  very  thought 
ful  and  very  calm,  is  long  and  deeply  lined,  with  a  somewhat 
large  nose,  and  a  projecting  upper  lip,  rigid,  like  that  of  the 
portrait  of  Erasmus  in  the  Louvre.  It  is  the  mouth  of  the 
writer  and  the  diplomatist  rather  than  of  the  orator.  Expres 
sion  is  to  be  looked  for  elsewhere,  in  the  deep  lines  of  the 
cheek  and  in  the  eyes,  of  so  clear  a  blue  in  an  almost  ashen 
face.  The  eyes  look  out  with  an  admirable  expression,  very 
gentle  and  very  firm,  very  clear  and  very  straightforward,  a 
look  of  certitude.  Modern  psychologists  have  a  somewhat 
peculiar,  but  very  accurate  word,  to  designate  those  characters 
in  whom  all  powers  seem  to  be  subordinated  to  a  central 
energy,  a  scientific  or  artistic,  political  or  religious  faith,  ac 
cepted  unhesitatingly  and  without  revision.  They  call  them 
the  Uwfied.  Seneca  has  already  said,  anticipating  by  his 
discoveries  as  moralist  our  modern  theories  of  mind :  — 

"  If  you  have  met  a  man  who  is  one,  you  have  seen  a  great 
thing." 

An  inward  disposition  is  not  enough  to  secure  so  even  a 
balance.  For  that  is  required  a  very  rare  harmony  between 
circumstances  and  instinct,  between  surroundings  and  inward 
impulse.  This  juxtaposition  occurs  in  the  cardinal  to  a 
singularly  exceptional  degree.  Speaking  to  me  of  his  life,  he 
told  me  with  the  affecting  gratitude  of  a  believer  who  recog 
nizes  the  acts  of  Providence  behind  the  fashion  of  the  passing 
world :  — 


168  OUTRE-MER 

"  I  have  had  a  happiness  very  seldom  known.  I  was  born 
here,  baptized  here.  I  made  my  first  communion  here,  and  I 
was  ordained  priest  in  the  same  cathedral  of  which  I  am  now 
the  archbishop." 

And  he  went  on  to  relate  his  first  visit  to  Rome,  where  he 
had  a  seat  in  the  Council  of  the  Vatican,  the  youngest  of  the 
thousand  prelates  gathered  in  that  assembly.  He  was  bishop 
of  South  Carolina,  and  had  been  barely  five  years  a  priest. 
At  that  time  there  were  only  forty-five  bishops  in  the  United 
States. 

"I  remember,"  he  went  on,  "coming  here  to  the  first  Bal 
timore  assembly,  when  I  was  chancellor  to  the  archbishop. 
There  are  more  than  twice  that  number  now.  It  is  with  this 
as  with  conversions.  They  counted  then.  This  year  I  have 
had  seven  hundred  in  this  diocese  alone,  which  is  very  small. 
The  human  soul  needs  food,"  he  added  in  English,  "and  it 
finds  a  perfect  nourishment  only  in  Catholicism." 

He  speaks  very  pure  French,  hesitating  a  little  for  words. 
Listening  to  him  you  feel  that  his  utterance  would  never  be 
brilliant,  but  his  speech  is  so  free  from  declamation,  his  mihd 
is  so  evidently  at  the  service  of  a  conscience  in  love  with 
truth,  each  phrase  reveals  so  steady  an  effort  to  make  the 
expression  tally  with  the  thought,  without  extravagance  or 
feebleness,  that  an  irresistible  authority  emanates  from  his 
words,  the  same  that  was  presaged  by  his  countenance,  gentle, 
firm,  and  true.  Quite  naturally  when  he  entered  upon  the 
field  of  social  problems,  Monsignor  Gibbons  again  changed 
from  French  to  English.  It  would  seem  as  if  we  ought  to  be 
able  to  use  a  foreign  language  with  the  greater  facility  the 
more  familiar  are  the  ideas  which  we  wish  to  express.  Noth 
ing  of  the  kind.  The  more  we  have  thought  of  a  subject,  the 
more  precise  our  ideas,  the  more  we  require  for  their  expres 
sion  the  language  in  which  we  formulated  them.  Perhaps  we 
must  seek  here  for  one  of  the  reasons  why  so  many  superior 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  169 

men  experience  singular  difficulty  in  using  for  their  own 
thoughts  languages  which  they  understand  and  read  perfectly. 
"  I  never  had  any  influence  over  the  creation  or  the  organi 
zation  of  the  Knights  of  Labor,"  the  cardinal  replied  to  one 
of  my  questions.  "What  I  said  on  the  subject  at  the  time  of 
my  visit  to  Rome  was  that  the  Church  has  no  motive  for  con 
demning  on  the  spot  and  on  principle  all  associations  of 
laboring  men.  I  have  always  thought,  and  I  still  think,  that 
workingmen  have  the  right  to  combine  to  protect  themselves 
against  the  tyranny  of  their  employers.  I  know  the  dangers 
of  these  associations;  to  begin  with,  strikes;  once  united 
they  are  so  soon  tempted  to  enter  upon  this  way,  which  is  not 
good,  and  in  which  they  have  always  been  crushed;  and  then 
intolerance  and  the  persecution  of  their  comrades  who  refuse 
to  join  them.  Notwithstanding  these  dangers,  I  believe  that 
the  Church  would  risk  the  loss  of  too  many  souls  by  forcing 
millions  of  these  men  to  choose  between  their  faith  and  a 
society  of  which  the  principles  are  not  in  themselves  to  be 
condemned." 

'"A  revolution  in  the  United  States?"  he  said,  in  answer  to 
another  question.  "No,  I  do  not  think  it  possible.  The 
Americans  have  been  often  reproached  for  being  first  and 
above  all  things  practical.  Before  they  dispossess  a  mil 
lionaire  —  a  billionaire,  if  you  will  —  of  a  single  dollar,  they 
will  realize  that  they  are  overturning  the  cornerstone  of  the 
whole  edifice,  and  they  will  pause.  Our  workingmen  are 
very  intelligent,  their  ideas  are  daring  but  very  just,  and  they 
are  quick  to  see  the  logic  of  things.  They  already  under 
stand,  in  spite  of  the  sophisms  of  agitators,  that  to  attack 
property  in  one  form  is  to  attack  it  in  all  forms.  When  the 
Chicago  anarchists  were  condemned,  public  sentiment,  as 
manifested  almost  immediately  after  by  a  vote,  was  in  favor 
of  the  judge  who  pronounced  the  sentence,  and  against  the 
governor  of  Illinois,  who  had  manifested  sympathy  with  the 


170  OUTRE-MER 

anarchists.  We  have  no  such  revolutionary  ferments  among 
us  as  are  upheaving  Europe.  Our  workingman,  when  he  will 
work,  gains  amply  the  means  of  livelihood, —  two,  three 
dollars  a  day.  They  will  come  in  time  everywhere  to  the 
eight-hour  day.  More  than  this,  they  are  not  irreligious. 
There  is  not  an  instance  of  a  public  man  who  is  an  avowed 
atheist." 

Upon  my  observing  that  I  had,  however,  met  at  Harvard 
University  a  large  number  of  minds  imbued  with  agnosticism, — 

"It  is  true,"  replied  the  cardinal,  "that  a  movement  of 
this  kind  maybe  recognized  in  certain  very  cultivated  circles. 
But  it  is  confined  to  those  circles,  and  Christianity  is  still 
very  vital,  both  in  private  and  public  life.  Congress  is  opened 
with  prayer.  The  President  never  addresses  the  people  with 
out  pronouncing  the  name  of  God.  The  Sabbath  rest  is  faith 
fully  observed." 

There  was  a  passionate  firmness  in  the  archbishop's  voice, 
and  a  warmer  light  in  his  eyes  when  he  spoke  of  religious 
things;  and  he  also,  like  Monsignor  Keane,  extolled  the  bless 
ings  of  liberty. 

"Our  great  strength," he  resumed,  "is  in  havingno  alliance 
with  the  State,  and  in  the  respect  of  the  State  for  our  indepen 
dence.  We  can  the  more  efficaciously  take  part  in  public 
affairs  under  these  conditions,  and  work  for  the  good  of  all. 
The  State  willingly  aids  us  in  matters  of  public  order.  For 
example,  in  Baltimore,  on  the  occasion  of  the  last  council, 
the  postoffice  department  opened  a  special  office  for  the  use 
of  the  bishops.  But,  beyond  minor  details  of  this  kind,  the 
State  is  not  concerned  with  us.  It  is  the  public  which  takes 
us  into  consideration.  They  are  continually  coming  to  con 
sult  us.  Thus,  not  long  ago,  in  the  matter  of  the  Louisiana 
lottery,  I  was  requested  to  write  a  letter  for  the  public  press. 
I  wrote  it,  and  I  think  it  helped  toward  the  suppression  of 
that  scandal.  The  people  love  us,  because  we  are  their  friends.'1 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  171 

I  interposed  with  the  question  if  this  was  also  the  case  with 
the  rich,  and  if,  on  the  other  hand,  he  did  not  foresee  great 
difficulties  arising  from  the  accumulation  of  such  immense 
fortunes  in  so  small  a  number  of  hands. 

"  Yes, "  he  went  on,  "  that  is  a  grave  problem.  We  must  hope 
that  in  time  a  better  way  of  dividing  the  common  wealth 
will  be  found.  This  is  why  I  said  just  now  that  my  sympa 
thies  are  with  the  associations  by  which  the  workingmen 
protect  themselves.  And  I  am  not  afraid  of  them,  notwith 
standing  formidable  excesses,  because  our  workingman  —  I 
cannot  say  it  too  emphatically —  is  profoundly,  fundamentally 
sensible.  In  the  first  place,  he  has  himself  the  chance  of  be 
coming  the  millionaire  he  so  much  envies.  That  often  occurs. 
Besides,  even  apart  from  this  hope,  he  is  instinctively  liberal 
and  just.  When  the  income  tax  was  proposed,  I  had  occasion 
to  talk  it  over  with  many  of  the  laboring  class.  I  found  them 
all  opposed  to  the  measure,  and  all  for  the  same  reason.  They 
did  not  approve  of  a  measure  which  tended  to  espionage  and 
falsehood.  They  deemed  it  inquisitorial  and  immoral.  Yes, 
I  have  confidence  in  the  people.  I  have  confidence  in  their 
love  of  truth.  I  had  a  very  evident  proof  of  it  a  few  years 
ago,  when  I  published  a  little  book  showing  Catholicism  as 
it  is,  entitled  The  Faith  of  Our  Fathers.  Two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  copies  were  sold,  and  Catholics  were  not 
the  larger  number  of  the  purchasers." 

The  prelate's  serious  countenance  lighted  up  at  the  mem 
ory.  I  never  felt  more  acutely  than  when  I  saw  that  proud 
smile  the  broad  separation  between  the  petty  self-gratulation 
of  the  professional  author,  counting  his  thousands  for  vanity 
or  for  lucre,  and  the  manly  joy  of  the  champion  of  the  faith, 
who  measures  by  the  success  of  a  book  the  service  he  has  ren 
dered  to  the  truth.  Men  of  God  give  such  teachings  without 
even  knowing  it. 

With  this  beneficent  impression  closed  an  interview  of  which 


172  OUTRE-MER 

I  think  I  have  usefully  preserved  the  most  important  features. 
As  I  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  See  House,  I  bore  with  me 
the  feeling  that  I  had  been  talking  with  an  excellent  priest. 
"That  is  really  something,"  as  an  old  priest  said  to  me  in  the 
Holy  Land,  showing  me  the  view  of  Nazareth.  After  saying 
to  me,  "  I  look  every  day  upon  this  scene  and  I  say  to  myself, 
This  is  where  Our  Lord  went  about  when  he  was  a  little  child; 
yes,"  he  added,  with  emphasis,  "that  is  really  something." 

Who  was  it  wrote  this  profound  sentence,  in  which  all  the 
sublimity  of  the  Christian  priesthood  is  summed  up:  "God 
gave  the  priest  to  the  world.  The  priest's  charge  is  to  give 
the  world  to  God." 

A  few  weeks  later  I  was  in  the  "  hall "  of  one  of  the  great 
hotels  in  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York.  In  the  office  clerks  were 
sorting  mails,  talking  into  telephones,  stamping  bills.  Busi 
ness  men  were  reading  their  letters,  cigar  in  mouth.  Others 
were  crowded  around  a  little  table,  where  a  keen-eyed  young 
woman,  pale  from  sedentary  work,  was  playing  with  nimble 
fingers  upon  the  keys  of  a  type-writing  machine.  They  were 
waiting  their  turns  to  dictate  a  letter.  Others  were  awaiting 
the  descent  of  one  of  the  three  elevators  that  ply  shuttle-wise 
along  the  fourteen  stories  of  the  hotel.  Others  were  passing 
through  a  door  beyond  which  could  be  seen  reflected  in  a  mir 
ror  the  bar  counter,  surrounded  by  persons  seeking  refreshment. 

In  the  midst  of  the  "hall"  a  man  was  conversing  —  a  sort 
of  giant  with  powerful  frame,  one  of  those  men  of  broad 
shoulders,  thick  waists,  large  hands  and  feet,  in  whom  nature 
appears  to  have  put  the  most  vitality,  and  used,  so  to  speak, 
the  most  material.  But  the  straight  lapels  of  his  frock-coat 
showed  that  he  belonged  to  the  Church,  and  his  violet  collar 
that  he  occupied  a  high  place  there.  It  was  Monsignor 
Ireland,  Archbishop  of  St.  Paul,  whom  I  had  vainly  sought 
the  previous  autumn  in  his  diocese  of  Minnesota, 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  173 

I  should  have  recognized  him  if  his  name  had  not  been 
spoken,  so  much  is  he  the  visible  embodiment  of  his  elo 
quence.  His  large,  long  face,  with  its  deeply  marked  feat 
ures,  is  lighted  up  with  bluish  eyes,  almost  too  small  for  these 
strong  brown  features.  The  grizzling  of  his  hair  and  eyebrows, 
naturally  very  black,  betray  the  prelate's  fifty-seven  years 
passed.  The  square  chin  gives  evidence  of  a  strong  will,  the 
high  nose  of  sagacity,  the  forehead  has  that  slightly  retreating 
line  which  marked  Mirabeau  and  Gambetta,  two  other  great 
orators.  The  mouth  is  admirably  flexible  and  expressive.  It 
is  an  eloquent  and  persuasive  mouth,  with  large  lips  that  speak 
of  kindliness,  though  when  at  rest  they  are  somewhat  stern. 
Notwithstanding  his  valor,  the  archbishop  has  passed  through 
too  many  struggles  not  to  have  sometimes  longed  to  utter  the 
Nunc  dimittis  of  the  wearied  crusader.  At  that  moment  he 
was  all  attention  and  good  nature.  I  was  to  learn  from  him  a 
few  minutes  later  that  the  personage  with  whom  he  was  thus 
publicly  conversing  was  a  reporter. 

"I  never  refuse  to  see  a  journalist,"  he  said,  after  explain 
ing  this  little  American  custom.  "Only  I  warn  them  that  if 
thev  Deport  me  incorrectly,  I  will  never  see  them  again." 

The  archbishop's  voice  is  guttural,  almost  harsh,  a  charac 
teristic  common  to  many  celebrated  orators.  One  of  his 
admirers  had  told  me  that  the  opening  words  of  his  speeches 
are  sometimes  painful  to  the  ear,  but  soon  it  becomes  accus 
tomed  to  his  tones.  Then  he  himself  warms  up,  and  the  gift 
of  expression  is  so  mighty  in  this  man  who  was  born  to  be  a 
public  leader,  if  not  an  apostle,  that  you  end  by  losing  even 
the  harshness  of  his  voice.  What  never-to-be-forgotten  hours 
I  spent  that  morning,  and  that  afternoon,  and  still  another 
day  hearing  him  talk  of  America  with  profound  patriotism, 
of  France  with  touching  sympathy,  of  Europe  with  lucid  and 
high  impartiality!  Listening,  I  wondered  at  the  flexibility 
of  his  mind,  in  which  there  is  all  the  excitability  of  the  Celt, 


174  OUTRE-MER 

—  Monsignor  Ireland,  as  his  name  indicates,  is  of  an  Irish 
family, —  all  the  logic  of  the  Latin, —  he  was  educated  in  the 
little  seminary  of  Maximieux  in  the  diocese  of  Belley,  France, 

—  and  all  the  realism  of  the  American  laboring  people.     His 
father  was  a  carpenter,  who  came  from  Ireland  to  Minnesota 
long  before  the  city  of  which  his  son  is  archbishop  had  come 
into  existence. 

I  listened  while  this  versatile  and  vivacious  discourse  passed 
from  the  highest  theological  subjects  to  the  humblest  details  of 
practical  activity.  The  archbishop  told  me  how,  at  one  time, 
he  had  been  obliged  to  oversee  the  seed-sowing  of  the  immi 
grants  of  his  diocese,  who  were  too  many  and  too  ignorant 
to  make  the  best  use  of  the  homesteads  they  had  taken 
up.  Then  he  replied  to  my  intricate  psychological  questions 
as  to  the  nature  of  American  piety,  in  which  mysticism  is  so 
promptly  translated  in  terms  of  activity.  He  described  his 
first  visit  to  Rome,  and  the  sort  of  terrified  surprise  with 
which  the  old  cardinals  looked  upon  him.  Then  returning  to 
the  social  problem  upon  which  I  had  been  questioning  him, 
as  I  had  questioned  the  cardinal,  he  went  on :  — 

"Our  workingmen?  No,  I  dread  nothing  from  them.  In 
the  first  place,  they  are  well  disposed,  and  those  of  them  who 
are  not  well  disposed  have  good  sense.  There  is  in  America, 
from  top  to  bottom  of  the  ladder,  a  much  more  conservative 
spirit  than  Europe  imagines.  The  dominating  sentiment 
everywhere,  in  the  poor  day-laborer  as  well  as  in  the  million 
aire,  is  respect  for  law.  The  laborer  is  not  revolutionary. 
He  knows  too  well  the  value  of  what  he  has,  to  dream  of  a 
social  order  which  shall  be  absolutely  different.  But  while  he 
accepts  the  existing  order,  he  desires  to  protect  himself  from 
it,  —  is  he  so  wrong?  And  he  proceeds  by  means  of  associa 
tions,  —  is  he  so  wrong  in  that?  That  is  in  the  race.  Rich 
men  amuse  themselves  in  clubs.  Why  should  not  working- 
men  organize  in  clubs  too,  and  especially  in  societies  for 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  175 

their  own  protection?  A  great  step  was  taken  when  the 
several  trade  associations  formed  themselves  into  a  larger 
association.  And  again,  why  should  they  not?  In  this  way 
was  formed  the  Knights  of  Labor.  In  my  opinion,  this  is 
well.  Capitalists  are  beginning  to  understand  that  they  have 
to  reckon  with  these  great  collective  forces.  What  is  the 
result?  They  confer,  and  conference  is  the  surest  means  of 
coming  to  an  understanding.  For  instance,  this  year  the 
directors  of  a  Western  railway,  the  president  of  which  I  know, 
felt  obliged  to  lower  wages;  the  profits  of  the  company  had 
fallen  too  low.  This  is  what  took  place.  First  of  all  the 
president  entered  into  conference  with  the  representatives  of 
the  engineers.  These  conferences  lasted  four  days.  The 
men  asked  the  reason  of  the  reduction.  They  examined  the 
balance-sheet  of  the  company.  They  learned  what  were  the 
figures  necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  their  present  wages. 
These  conferences  with  the  president  ended,  they  conferred 
with  their  comrades.  Finally,  this  body  of  workmen  having 
accepted  the  reduction,  it  was  the  brakemen's  turn.  You 
would  need  to  have  been  present  at  one  of  these  interviews 
to  be  able  to  appreciate  the  deep  sense  of  equality  that  per 
vades  this  country.  But,  you  see,  the  American  business  man 
is  too  little  removed  from  the  time  when  he  was  himself  a 
workingman  not  to  know,  when  he  talks  with  his  workmen, 
with  whom  he  is  talking  and  what  he  ought  to  say  to  them. 
These  people  do  not  deem  themselves  of  two  different  races, 
and  that  is  much." 

The  archbishop  was  silent.  He  was  about  to  touch  frankly 
upon  a  painful  subject.  In  every  word  I  had  felt  the  thrill 
of  the  plebeian  apostle.  By  his  origin  the  neighbor  of  the 
humble,  like  the  business  men  of  whom  he  had  been  speak 
ing,  he  rejoices  in  the  progress  of  the  laboring  people,  and 
suffers  in  their  mistakes.  He  went  on :  — 

"Nevertheless,  our  workingmen  are  touched  by  two  grave 


176  OUTRE-MER 

faults.  The  first  and  greatest  is  intemperance  —  unhappily 
that  of  alcoholic  liquors.  For  they  drink  practically  no 
wine.  We  have  carried  on  and  we  are  carrying  on  an  un 
wearied  campaign  against  this  vice.  We  have  not  yet  con 
quered.  The  second  fault  is  extravagance.  Our  working- 
men  go  too  fast.  They  spend  their  money  as  fast  as  they 
earn  it.  They  want  their  daughters  to  be  ladies.  Go  into 
their  houses:  you  will  find  carpets,  pianos.  It  is  not  that 
they  care  for  luxuries;  it  is  the  profound  feeling  of  equality 
that  urges  them  to  make  a  show.  It  seems  to  them  natural, 
almost  necessary,  that  luxuries  should  be  within  the  reach  of 
everybody.  Then  when  hard  times  come  they  are  poor  and 
they  suffer.  Insurance  is  correcting  this  a  little.  Side  by 
side  with  the  extravagant  are  the  prudent.  Many  come  at 
last  to  buy  a  bit  of  ground  on  which  to  build  a  house,  and 
then  they  immediately  buy  the  next  lot  for  speculation.  This 
is  why  envy  of  capital  does  not  exist  among  us.  More  than 
this,  our  working  people  are  chaste  and  they  are  religious.  I 
am  told  that  in  Europe  concubinage  is  the  scourge  of  the 
poorer  classes.  There  is  nothing  of  the  sort  among  our 
people.  I  can  sum  up  their  virtues  in  one  word :  the  hope  of 
the  Church  is  in  the  working  people.  All  who  are  Catholics 
practise  their  religion.  You  will  see  them  all  communicate 
at  Easter  almost  without  exception.  This  fervor  of  the 
people  is  what  gives  us  the  magnificent  opportunity  of  which 
I  am  always  speaking. 

"Yes,"  he  went  on,  "this  immense  country  is  new,  free 
from  prejudices,  and  it  increasingly  feels  the  need  of  that 
order  in  unity  which  is  the  distinctive  mark  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  The  great  problem  in  order  that  this  unity  shall  be 
manifested,  that  there  shall  truly  be  an  American  Catholic 
Church,  is  that  of  language;  there  must  first  be  one  speech. 
But  many  of  our  members  are  immigrants,  Germans,  Poles, 
French  Canadians.  They  come  here  speaking  their  own  Ian- 


THE  LOWER   ORDERS  177 

guage,  led  by  priests  who  speak  no  other  language.  Here  is 
a  real  peril.  If  we  insist  upon  the  English  language  in  our 
dioceses,  these  priests  will  be  left  without  a  flock  and  these 
people  without  priests.  And  yet  it  is  necessary  to  compel 
both  people  and  priest  to  learn  English,  in  order  that  our 
Church  be  not  dissipated  in  a  series  of  local  bodies  and  also 
that  we  leave  no  ground  for  the  accusation  that  we  remain  as 
foreigners  in  the  country.  But  what  then !  it  is  an  effort  to 
require  it  of  the  first  generation,  but  the  second  will  be  com 
posed  of  true  American  Catholics.  Here  again  we  have  had  a 
struggle.  The  Germans  have  petitioned  Rome  that  the  bishops 
here  should  be  of  different  nationalities  in  proportion  to  the 
nationality  of  the  immigrants.  Now  of  ten  million  Catholics, 
more  than  three  millions  are  Germans.  A  third  of  the  bishops 
would  then  be  Germans.  That  would  be  the  end  of  the  unity 
of  our  Church.  Happily,  the  petitioners  mingled  politics 
with  their  request.  That  touched  the  patriotism  of  American 
citizens.  They  bestirred  themselves  and  we  won.  Ah,  our 
future  is  vast,  very  vast,  if  only  we  will  be  profoundly,  reso 
lutely  American  and  democratic.  We  have  need  of  three 
things:  morality,  and  we  have  it;  adherents,  and  immigration 
is  unceasingly  bringing  them;  knowledge,  and  our  universities 
and  seminaries  are  going  to  give  it  to  us  more  and  more.  But 
mark  well,  it  is  not  the  culture  of  yesterday  that  we  need,  but 
that  of  to-day,  of  to-morrow,  of  the  twentieth  century." 

And  while  the  archbishop  appeared  already  to  see  with  his 
clear  eyes  the  triumphant  morrow  for  which  he  has  given  his 
life  hour  by  hour,  I  called  to  mind  his  utterance  in  the  cathe 
dral  of  Baltimore,  of  which  all  our  conversation  had  been  only 
a  commentary :  — 

"Christ  made  the  social  question  the  very  basis  of  his  teach 
ing.  For  this  is  the  proof  he  gave  of  his  divinity :  The  blind 
see,  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  healed,  to  the  poor  the  gospel 
is  preached  /" 


178  OUTRE-MER 

One  of  my  French  friends,  to  whom  I  read  the  report  of 
these  two  conversations,  shook  his  head.  For  ten  years  his " 
duties  have  kept  him  in  New  York.  He  knows  the  United 
States  well,  and  he  believes  the  country  to  be  threatened,  if 
not  with  a  catastrophe,  at  least  with  tremendous  disturbances. 
I  should  add  that  he  is  naturally  a  pessimist,  very  hostile  to 
democracy,  and  that  he  lives  in  a  state  of  permanent  rage 
against  the  positivism  and  the  impenetrability  of  American 
society. 

"I  should  like  to  have  them  here,  your  two  archbishops,"  he 
said,  after  a  few  petulant  and  mocking  exclamations;  "  I  should 
just  like  to  lay  a  few  of  these  documents  before  their  eyes." 
And  running  through  one  of  the  cases  on  his  desk  he  brought 
out  several  files  of  papers. 

"These  are  not  ideas  and  phrases,  here;  these  are  facts  and 
figures  which  I  have  collected  for  a  great  work,  which  I  shall 
perhaps  never  write,  and  as  they  are  all  taken  from  reports 
published  by  the  Labor  Bureau  in  the  last  ten  years  they  are 
incontestable.  It  is  now  January,  1894.  Well,  at  the  end  of 
last  December,  not  twenty  days  ago,  the  official  investigation 
stated  that,  in  the  States  of  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  the 
number  of  men  out  of  work  amounted  to  two  hundred  and 
twenty-three  thousand  two  hundred  and  fifty.  In  Pennsylvania, 
the  number  reached  a  hundred  and  fifty-one  thousand  five  hun 
dred.  Calculate,  and  you  will  not  be  beyond  the  truth,  that 
there  are  thus  in  this  country  more  than  eight  hundred  thousand 
unemployed,  as  they  call  them.  Add  the  two  million  women 
and  children  who  compose  their  families,  and  you  will  reach 
the  conclusion  that  at  the  present  moment,  in  this  terrible 
winter,  the  Great  Republic  has  upon  its  soil  three  millions  of 
human  beings  who  are  literally  dying  of  hunger!  And  they 
would  have  me  not  believe  in  an  approaching  revolution,  when 
such  armies  of  desperate  folk  are  here  ready  to  follow  the  first 
agitator  who  knows  enough  to  arouse  them ! 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  179 

"Add  to  this  that  all  these  starving  people  are  enrolled  in 
some  association,  and  that  beside  them  swarms  another  army, 
almost  as  wretched,  —  the  workmen  whose  pay  is  little  by  little 
reduced,  and  whose  work  is  made  almost  intolerable  by  the 
universal  business  depression.  Here  are  more  figures  from  the 
same  official  list.  You  will  find  them,  and  others  as  con 
clusive,  in  the  book  which  Madame  Aveling  —  Karl  Marx's 
daughter,  I  think  —  and  her  husband  have  published,  under 
the  title  The  Working-  Class  Movement  in  America.  In  Fall 
River,  for  example,  in  the  large  cotton  manufactories,  the 
average  wage  of  the  workingman  is  nine  dollars  a  week;  that 
gives  him  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  day,  while  in  New  Jersey  the 
average  comes  down  to  a  dollar  and  a  quarter,  and  in  the  rest 
of  the  United  States  to  a  dollar.  At  a  first  glance,  these  figures 
seem  rather  high,  and  it  is  by  bringing  them  forward  that  cer 
tain  economists  boast  of  the  superior  condition  of  the  laboring 
classes  in  America.  But  to  appreciate  what  these  six  or  seven 
francs  a  day  are  really  worth,  you  must  make  a  comparative 
table  of  the  cost  of  living  in  different  countries. 

"  The  average  rent  of  the  American  laborer  is  sixty-six  dol 
lars  a  year,  while  the  average  rent  of  the  Swiss  laborer  is  twenty- 
five  dollars,  and  that  of  the  German  laborer  twenty-two  dollars. 
The  American  laborer  spends  for  fuel  nearly  thirty  dollars, 
while  the  Swiss  laborer  spends  twenty,  and  the  German  ten. 
Everything  is  in  proportion.  The  wages  which  appear  suffi 
cient  from  a  European  point  of  view  do  not  represent  the 
support  of  a  family.  The  labor  of  women  and  children  results 
from  this  state  of  things,  and  here  the  conditions  are  still  more 
severe.  See,  here  are  other  figures.  In  Philadelphia,  the 
making  of  women's  chemises  brings  sixty  cents  a  dozen,  nurse's 
aprons  thirty-five  cents.  A  woman  can  make  nearly  a  dozen 
chemises  or  two  dozen  aprons  in  a  day,  working  from  half-past 
five  in  the  morning  till  seven  in  the  evening.  Better  educated 
women,  employed  in  what  they  call  "clerical  work,"  in  stores 


180  OUTRE-MER 

and  offices,  earn  from  five  to  six  dollars  a  week.  Out  of  this 
they  must  pay  their  board  and  washing,  and  dress  well  in  order 
not  to  lose  their  positions. 

"As  to  the  children,  these  are  the  heart-rending  statistics. 
In  Connecticut,  of  seventy  thousand  laborers,  five  thousand  are 
under  fifteen.  Of  every  hundred  employed  in  cigar-making 
in  New  York  City,  twenty-five  are  children.  Now  the  work 
in  cigar  factories  is  ten  hours  a  day.  In  the  cotton-mills  it  is 
eleven.  In  Detroit,  the  small  boys  in  the  factories  work  nine 
hours  sixteen  minutes,  the  little  girls  nine  hours  and  ten  min 
utes.  Observe  that  these  figures  are  taken  in  the  States  where 
labor  legislation  is  a  prominent  feature.  And  now,"  he  added, 
folding  up  his  papers,  "  if  you  want  these  statistics  to  become 
alive  for  you,  you  have  only  three  very  simple  experiments  to 
make,  none  of  which  will  keep  you  from  your  hotel  more  than 
a  few  hours.  Ask  a  newspaper  editor  to  detail  one  of  his 
reporters  to  accompany  you  into  the  lower  quarters  of  the 
city:  the  first  visit  during  the  day,  the  second  at  night,  the 
third  to  the  penitentiaries  on  the  Islands.  You  will  see 
the  refuse  of  this  civilization,  the  pomps  of  which  have  so 
dazzled  you,  and  perhaps  you  will  conclude  that  I  am  not 
wrong  in  protesting  against  the  optimism  of  two  great  bishops, 
whose  ideas  about  the  working  classes  in  the  United  States  you 
have  sought.  Like  many  good  men,  the  dreams  evoked  by 
their  good  wishes  hide  from  them  the  hideousness  of  the 
real." 

I  have  followed  my  compatriot's  counsels,  although  the 
documents  which  he  cited  made  no  very  profound  impression 
upon  me.  I  have  studied  social  problems  too  much  to  attach 
great  importance  to  official  investigations.  They  are  the  same 
as  revolutionary  inquisitions,  and  that  is  saying  all.  Both 
proceed  by  extreme  figures  and,  when  all  is  said,  the  proof  that 
existing  social  conditions  are  endurable  is  that  men  continue 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  181 

to  endure.  They  permit  frightful  wretchedness,  which  springs 
from  causes  too  complex  for  the  remedy  for  this  refuse  of 
civilization,  as  my  friend  expresses  it,  ever  to  be  formulated 
with  exactness.  Whenever  men  have  tried  to  apply  radical 
measures  of  reform  to  this  infinitely  complex  organism,  they 
have  added  the  injustice  of  disorder  and  its  misfortunes  to  the 
injustice  of  destiny.  None  the  less,  the  revolutionaries  are 
right  in  dwelling  with  emphasis  upon  the  too  odious  facts  and 
the  brutal  oppressions  which  constitute  the  social  sin,  the  sin 
of  all  of  us.  They  prevent  wretched  egotism  from  sleeping, 
either  by  terrifying  us  in  the  midst  of  our  security,  or  by 
awakening  our  humanity,  and  they  urge  us  to  remedies  of 
detail,  the  only  ones  which  have  even  a  little  mended  the  lot 
of  the  victims  of  a  too  severe  competition. 

I  do  not  therefore  regret  the  three  excursions  into  the  lower 
strata  of  New  York,  undertaken  in  consequence  of  this  conver 
sation.  Although  such  experiences  are  very  superficial,  I  think  I 
have  gained  from  them  a  more  accurate  view  of  the  conditions 
among  which  the  future  of  this  unparalleled  country  is  being 
worked  out.  The  hours  spent  in  these  three  visits  were  short, 
and  the  details  which  I  was  able  to  grasp  were  limited.  The 
reader  will  judge  by  the  pages  in  my  journal,  to  which  I  con 
signed  each  of  these  "experiences  "  on  the  spot,  whether  I  am 
mistaken  in  attaching  some  importance  to  their  significance. 

January  ij.  — Toward  noon  on  a  cruelly  cold  winter's  day, 

Mr.  K and  I  boarded  one  of  the  green  cars  on  Broadway, 

which  are  still  drawn  by  horses.  In  twenty  minutes  we  had 
quitted  the  New  York  which  I  know  for  a  New  York  which  I 
do  not  know.  Blocks  succeed  blocks,  built  after  a  still  more 
incoherent  manner  in  this  part  of  the  town  than  in  that  in 
which  I  disembarked  five  months  ago.  We  changed  cars  at 
the  corner  of  First  Avenue,  and  after  twenty  minutes  got  out 
again,  and  went  on  foot  down  a  long  street  of  dilapidated 


182  OUTRE-MER 

houses.  The  cellar  of  one  of  them  has  a  steep  stairway,  which 
leads  us  to  a  sort  of  little  "office,"  divided  into  two  rooms 
by  an  unpainted,  unpapered  board  partition.  One  serves  as 
waiting-room,  the  other  as  office. 

This  is  the  central  office  of  one  of  the  workingmen's  asso 
ciations,  which  abound  in  the  United  States.  This  one  has 
recently  been  founded  by  a  young  man,  who  happens  at  the 
moment  to  be  within.  I  shall  call  him  Bazarow,  after 
the  nihilist  student  in  Turgenieff' s  novel,  Fathers  and  Sons; 
it  will  not  be  in  contradiction  with  the  remarks  which  we  ex 
changed  during  this  strange  afternoon.  He  is  a  Russian  Jew, 
from  the  part  that  borders  on  Poland,  who  came  to  New  York 
six  years  ago, —  an  agitator  by  profession.  He  is  rather  good- 
looking,  with  long,  very  light  hair,  which  curls  around  a  very 
pale  face.  His  prominent  eyes  are  sea-green,  the  whites 
dashed  with  minute  threads  of  blood.  His  thick  enunciation 
has  less  of  a  foreign  accent  in  French  than  in  English.  He 
has  but  recently  acquired  the  latter  language,  but  he  speaks  it 
with  the  extreme  facility  which  belongs  to  his  double  origin, 
—  Slav  and  Semite. 

This  disturbing  personage  asked  us  to  be  seated,  after  hav 
ing  looked  at  us  with  that  searching  glance  which  takes  for 
granted  a  possible  spy,  —  the  glance  of  all  militant  socialists. 
However,  he  is  all  right  with  the  law,  and  the  certificate  which 
authorized  him  to  found  his  association  is  displayed  upon  the 
wall  above  the  table,  beside  a  small  notice  printed  in  Hebrew, 
and  marked  with  a  death's  head  and  crossbones.  Apparently 
he  saw  nothing  in  us  to  justify  suspicion,  for  he  continued  to 
sort  the  voluminous  morning  mail;  but  this  time  with  the 
ostentatious  air  of  the  over-busy  official.  He  would  read 
names,  dictate  appointments,  express  surprise  at  not  recogniz 
ing  this  or  that  one,  consult  his  secretary. 

The  latter,  a  man  of  forty,  sordid  of  dress  and  sorry  of  mien, 
was  occupied  with  counting  out  fifty  cents  to  a  workingman, 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  183 

who  meekly,  with  a  sort  of  dogged  passivity,  held  out  a  red 
pass-book.  The  secretary  exchanged  a  few  words  in  German 
with  his  gloomy  client,  then  spoke  in  Russian  to  his  chief. 
I  became  aware  of  a  pile  of  pamphlets  on  the  table,  destined 
for  the  propaganda.  They  were  the  English  translation  of 
a  work  by  the  Italian  Mazzini,  —  The  Duties  of  Man.  I 
opened  it  haphazard,  and  found  a  chapter  upon  God.  This  is 
the  point  from  which  the  revolutionary  party  sets  out!  To 
arrive  where,  their  newspapers  tell  too  clearly !  What  they  do 
not  tell  clearly  enough,  that  which  such  a  place  as  this  makes 
perceptible  and,  as  it  were,  concrete,  is  the  international  mix 
ture,  the  astounding  fusion  of  races,  which  this  company  repre 
sented.  I  found  here  a  corner  of  Cosmopolis,  one  of  the 
quarters,  a  suburb,  rather,  of  this  city  of  cities,  whose  founders 
were  exquisites  like  the  Prince  de  Ligne,  Lord  Byron,  Madame 
de  Stae'l,  Beyle,  and  Heinrich  Heine.  These  great  artists  and 
noblemen  sought  in  expatriation  and  travel  that  which  would 
make  them  the  better  enjoy  the  composite  charm  of  the  vast 
modern  civilization//  It  is  one  more  proof  that  our  habits  and 
our  surroundings  have  precisely  the  meaning  and  value  of  our 
souls.' 

Bazarow  finished  with  his  mail,  and  set  out  with  us  for  the 
police  station.  We  were  there  to  take  a  detective  to  accom 
pany  us  on  our  visit  to  the  lower  districts  of  the  city.  The 
agitator  himself  expressed  the  desire  that  we  should  be  thus 
protected,  and  himself  with  us,  against  dangers  which  proved 
to  be  entirely  imaginary.  But  the  slight  detail  showed  better 
than  all  the  discourses  how  essentially  this  party  of  social 
destruction,  which  to  us  conservatives  appears  to  be  so  united 
in  its  hatred  of  the  established  order,  is  at  bottom  divided 
against  itself.  Our  guide  was  afraid  of  being  maltreated  by 
workingmen  of  another  school  of  opinion. 

His  gait  alone  was  enough,  in  this  city  of  haste,  to  betray 


184  OUTRE-MER 

the  foreigner.  It  was  the  gait  of  the  lounger,  who  walks  with 
out  aim,  without  haste,  without  directness.  He  wore  a  sack 
overcoat,  longer  in  front  than  behind,  because  of  the  books 
with  which  his  pockets  were  crammed.  With  his  soft,  shape 
less  hat,  his  flannel  shirt,  his  shiny  trousers,  he  reminded 
me  of  the  Bohemians  of  literature  who  haunt  the  cafes  of 
the  Latin  Quarter  and  Montmartre,  with  their  indifference  to 
the  external  world,  their  aggressive  thoughtlessness,  and  their 
infatuation  for  ideas,  and  especially  for  words. 

During  the  half  hour  which  we  spent  going  first  to  the  police 
station  and  then,  the  chief  of  the  said  station  being  absent,  to 
a  bar  for  luncheon,  Bazarow  talked,  talked,  talked.  His  gar 
rulity  was  not  without  eloquence.  Like  all  revolutionaries 
whom  I  have  known,  he  kept  to  generalities.  He  was  lavish 
of  unverifiable,  and  therefore  indisputable,  theories  of  a  vast 
regeneration,  continually  interrupting  himself  with  a  "  that  is 
my  belief,"  enough  to  arouse  an  assembly  of  idiots  to 
frenzy.  He  announced  certain  precise  opinions  upon  the 
French  peasant,  whom  he  compared  with  the  Russian  peasant. 
That  he  understood  them  both  shows  the  extent  and  the 
penetration  of  this  revolutionary  work,  in  its  prepara 
tions  for  attacking  the  farm  laborer,  after  corrupting  the 
factory  hand.  The  name  of  Jerusalem  having  come  up  in 
the  conversation  relative  to  the  farm  colonies  which  some 
benevolent  Israelites  are  undertaking  in  Palestine,  Bazarow 
exclaimed :  — 

"  Jerusalem !  My  father  wanted  to  send  me  there  !  But  my 
Jerusalem  is  here.  My  father,"  he  continued  with  a  sneer, 
"would  have  made  me  a  saint.  I  have  become  an  infidel." 
His  large  green  eyes  shot  forth  the  strange  glance  peculiar  to 
some  of  his  race,  in  which  there  is  an  infinitude  of  mystification 
and  of  lost  illusions.  When  you  have  seen  the  Jews  weeping 
at  the  foot  of  the  Temple  wall  in  Jerusalem,  on  Fridays,  you 
can  understand  what  must  be  the  scepticism  of  those  who  have 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  185 

hoped  for  ages,  whenever  they  cease  to  believe  in  the  promised 
Messiah,  who,  for  them,  has  never  come. 

And,  as  if  this  man  had  heard  my  thought,  he  went 
on:  — 

"There  is  a  deep  gulf  between  us  and  the  men  who  believe 
in  the  Bible,  I  know.  There  are  those  who  pretend  to  be 
socialists,  especially  Catholics,  Archbishop  Ireland,  for  ex 
ample.  But  Catholics,  Jews,  or  Protestants,  priests,  rabbis,  or 
pastors,  they  all  tell  the  people  that  they  must  accept  the  will 
of  God,  that  they  must  be  resigned,  satisfied.  Well !  socialism 
consists  in  teaching  precisely  the  opposite,  in  demonstrating 
that  he  ought  to  be  in  revolt,  dissatisfied" 

He  uttered  the  profound  remark  at  the  very  moment  when 
we  were  crossing  the  threshold  of  the  restaurant,  into  which 

Mr.  K invited  him,  saying,  with  the  incisive  irony  of  a 

true  American, — 

"We  democrats  like  aristocratic  public  houses,  don't  we?  " 

We  entered  a  dining-room,  pretty  sumptuously  decorated, 
indeed,  with  mirrors  and  colored  glass.  Business  men,  almost 
all  Jews,  were  taking  a  hasty  lunch.  One  of  them  recognized 
Bazarow  and  shook  hands  with  him.  It  was  one  of  the  manu 
facturers  for  whom  he  had  worked  on  his  first  arrival  in  New 
York,  and  whom  he  had  well-nigh  ruined  by  a  strike. 

"He  fought  me  quite  openly,"  said  the  agitator,  "and  I 
fought  him  openly.  That  is  not  a  reason  for  not  recognizing 
one  another." 

He  smiled,  remembering  the  strike,  episodes  of  which  he 
related  to  us  while  eating  some  fried  oysters.  He  saw  in  it  a 
glorious  campaign  in  favor  of  ideas  which  I  hope  he  at  least 
believed  to  be  true.  He  forgot  the  men  it  made  more  hungry. 
For  that  matter,  those  are  things  that  revolutionaries  never 
think  of.  When  you  investigate  their  mental  make-up,  you 
always  find  that  these  are  minds  given  to  the  abstract,  for 
whom  human  woe  is  simply  the  starting-point  for  a  course  of 


186  OUTRE-MER 

reasoning.  The  theorists  who  talk  of  it  the  most  are  those 
who  have  felt  it  the  least ! 

We  returned  to  the  police  station.  Our  companion  remained 
at  the  door,  and  wisely,  for  the  celebrated  Mr.  Byrnes,  whom 
we  found  at  length,  spoke  of  him  in  terms  which  would  have 
made  the  visit  very  painful  if  he  had  been  present.  This 
superintendent  of  public  safety,  the  best  that  New  York  has 
ever  had,  is  a  sort  of  stern-faced  giant,  with  firmly  closed 
mouth,  and  penetrating,  almost  compelling,  eye.  It  is  a 
strange  impression  thus  to  exchange  in  a  few  seconds  the 
company  of  a  declared  revolutionary  for  that  of  a  professional 
officer  of  justice.  You  feel  the  necessity  that  every  civilized 
person  shall  take  part  in  the  implacable  and  incessant  duel 
of  order  against  disorder,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  legiti 
macy,  in  a  certain  sense,  of  both  sorts  of  people.  I  was 
destined  to  feel  this  impression  still  more  strongly.  To  escort 
us  in  our  tour  through  the  land  of  poverty,  Mr.  Byrnes  detailed 
one  of  his  best  officers,  whose  real  name  I  have  promised  to 
conceal.  I  shall  call  him  Clark,  as  I  have  called  the  Slavonian 
nihilist  Bazarow. 

A  man  entered,  short  and  thick-set,  with  the  face  of  a  mus 
tachioed  Molossian,  and  a  tenacious  jaw  beneath  a  square-cut 
nose.  His  little  black  eyes  seemed  to  be  burning  away  back 
near  his  brain,  like  those  of  beasts  of  prey.  He  was  an 
animal  all  muscle  and  all  pursuit,  his  slightest  movements 
betraying  the  agility  of  a  savage.  Merely  in  looking  at  his  walk 
I  understood  why  American  romance-writers  have  a  fancy  for 
taking  detectives  as  the  heroes  of  their  sensational  novels.  In 
a  creature  of  this  race,  physical  and  moral  energy  are  in  a  state 
of  perpetual  ebullition,  as  among  soldiers  on  a  campaign. 
Audacity,  presence  of  mind,  capacity  that  would  suffice  to 
itself  in  all  dangers,  address,  and  art,  showed  themselves  pres 
ent  in  this  athletic  policeman,  and,  with  it  all,  the  joviality  of 
a  soldier. 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  187 

We  took  leave  of  Mr.  Byrnes,  whose  sharp  eye  softened  as  he 

looked  on  "his  man,"  and  were  soon  downstairs.  Mr.  K 

and  I  introduced  Messrs.  Clark  and  Bazarow  to  one  another. 
All  the  antagonism  of  two  social  species  was  suddenly  revealed, 
in  the  accidental  meeting  of  these  two  men.  The  prominent 
eyes  of  the  revolutionist  became  insolent,  with  a  sort  of  ironical 
and  terrified  insolence,  while  the  policeman's  little  short  nose 
wrinkled  and  shrivelled,  like  the  muzzle  of  a  bulldog  about  to 
spring.  The  "Very  glad  to  see  you,  sir,"  with  which  he 
greeted  the  other,  sounded  like  a  growl.  Then  walking  side 
by  side,  their  backs  alone  continued  to  call  up  the  thought 
of  two  worlds  in  conflict,  the  one  with  his  trooper's  figure,  his 
military  overcoat,  brushed  and  buttoned,  his  hat  shining  like 
metal,  his  feet  encased  in  strong  boots,  walking  with  a  singular 
firmness,  while  the  other,  by  instinct  and  bravado,  emphasized 
his  carelessness  of  attire,  with  his  uncertain  steps,  his  irresolute 
hands  stuck  in  the  pockets  of  his  torn  and  soiled  trousers,  his 
indifferent,  mocking,  and  indomitable  air  under  his  ragged 
headkerchief.  And  yet  they  began  to  converse,  with  the  good- 
natured  familiarity  which  seems  to  float  in  the  air  of  this  vast 
democracy,  and  to  be  breathed  in  at  every  pore. 

"  It  is  astonishing  that  we  should  not  have  met  before,  Mr. 
Clark,"  said  Bazarow. 

"And  that  I  have  not  arrested  you,  my  boy,"  replied  the 
other. 

"Oh!"  said  the  Pole,  "we  know  that  Mr.  Byrnes  and  his 
men  are  not  fond  of  men  who  are  engaged  in  organizing  labor, 
and  those  men  are  not  fond  of  Mr.  Byrnes  and  his  men,  either." 

There  was  pride  and  defiance  in  the  foreigner's  thick  utter 
ance.  We  foreboded  a  dispute,  and  I  asked  Mr.  Clark  about 
his  life  and  profession. 

"Well,"  he  said,  after  a  few  words  about  his  age  and  his 
family,  "my  profession  has  the  merit  of  always  holding  out 
the  hope  of  some  little  excitement.  Last  week,  for  example,  I 


188  OUTRE-MER 

had  the  muzzle  of  a  desperate  burglar's  revolver  in  my  mouth. 
If  he  had  fired,  I  should  not  have  had  the  pleasure  of  making 
your  acquaintance  and  that  of  this  gentleman." 

He  looked  again  toward  Bazarow.  I  felt  his  muscles  swell 
under  his  overcoat.  They  tingled  at  feeling  their  prey  so 
near  and  not  being  able  to  fall  upon  it.  His  little  eyes  shot 
forth  a  wicked  gleam.  For  the  moment  the  excitement  of  his 
profession  consisted  in  protecting  the  enemy  upon  whom  he 
could  have  pounced  with  such  good  will.  Mastering  himself, 
he  laughed  and  offered  him  a  cigar. 

While  conversing  thus,  we  had  reached  the  heart  of  the  dis 
trict  the  New  Yorkers  call  the  Bowery,  from  an  old  Dutch  word 
meaning  farm.  The  street  which  we  had  entered  might,  with 
all  its  sordid  houses,  have  been  a  suburb  of  Rome  or  Naples; 
for  it  was  inhabited  only  by  Italians.  After  having  walked 
for  a  few  moments  between  these  buildings,  all  whose  signs 
and  notices  were  in  Italian,  we  entered  the  first  abode.  It 
consisted  of  two  rooms  on  the  level  of  the  street,  as  small  as 
a  boat's  cabins. 

Men  and  women,  to  the  number  of  eight,  were  working 
there  crouched  over  their  work,  in  a  fetid  air,  which  an  iron 
stove  made  still  more  stifling,  and  in  what  dirt !  Not  one  of 
them  spoke  English.  I  put  a  question  to  them  in  their  own 
language,  and  learned  that  they  were  from  Catanzaro,  in  Cala 
bria.  Four  years  ago,  at  this  precise  date,  I  was  visiting  that 
lovely  city,  perched  aloft  where  one  can  see  the  sea,  and  which 
one  reaches  by  climbing  a  hillside  planted  with  cactus.  Why 
did  not  they  stay  there,  pasturing  their  flocks  and  eating  the 
wild  fruits  that  grow  along  the  edge  of  the  thorny  green  leaves 
of  the  prickly  pear? 

Invincible  hope  brought  them  here,  to  this  hole,  for  which 
they  pay  eight  dollars  a  month,  the  price  of  a  year's  rent  in 
their  own  country !  Instead  of  their  window  opening  on  the 
wild,  purple  mountain,  the  deep  green  ravines,  and  the  free 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  189 

blue  sea,  they  open  their  window,  when  they  want  to  renew 
the  air,  upon  a  court,  cold  and  noisome  as  a  sewer,  into  which 
rain  down  the  pestilent  microbes  from  the  linen  of  all  the 
neighbors,  hanging  overhead  from  ropes. 

It  is  like  this,  indefinitely,  all  along  this  street,  and  how 
many  others?  We  visited  a  second  house,  where  lived  a  second 
family,  composed  of  nine  persons.  This  one  came  from 
Caserta.  The  women  and  children  are  shivering  in  their 
rags,  in  spite  of  the  stove,  always  at  white  heat.  With  their 
Southern  faces,  yellow  —  almost  greenish  —  from  the  heat  of 
their  natal  sun,  with  their  brilliant  black  eyes,  these  exiles 
move  you  to  pity.  Two  steps  away,  in  the  open  air, —  if  this 
harsh,  pestilential  cellar-fog  can  be  called  air, —  girls  from 
Abruzzo,  wrapped  in  thick  shawls,  are  tacking  coverlids. 
Thin,  and  already  worn  out,  in  spite  of  their  twenty  years, 
they  look  at  you  with  a  smile  that  is  hungry  and  cold, —  above 
all  cold,  cold  to  the  marrow  of  their  bones,  cold  to  their 
blood, —  and  curse  questa  brutissima  terra,  this  hideous  land. 

We  recognize  the  emigration  enterprise,  the  exodus  of 
entire  villages,  the  voyage  from  Naples  to  Gibraltar,  then  from 
Gibraltar  here,  at  cheap  rates,  in  the  hold  or  on  the  deck, 
according  to  the  season,  on  board  of  one  of  the  vast  steamers 
the  colored  picture  of  which  was  displayed  in  the  windows  of 
the  wine  shops  along  the  street.  Above  it  flaunts  the  an 
nouncement  of  the  company,  which  is  German.  On  the  front 
of  another  liquor  saloon  is  the  Savoyard  cross.  There  is  a 
symbolism  in  the  juxtaposition.  Is  it  not  to  the  work  of  the 
Triple  Alliance  and  their  military  folly  that  we  must  attribute 
the  flight  of  these  unhappy  wretches  from  their  beautiful  but 
impoverished  country?  Even  between  these  two  wretched 
nesses,  the  agio  does  not  let  them  alone.  The  sufficiently 
ironical  inscription,  Banca  Popolare,  appears  at  a  corner. 
Blue  bills  of  a  hundred  or  fifty  lire  are  displayed  in  a  glass 
case,  tempting  the  hand.  Our  companions  pause. 


190  OUTRE-MER 

"Do  you  not  think,"  said  the  socialist,  emphatically,  "that 
it  would  be  better  to  give  all  this  money  to  the  wretches  whom 
we  have  just  seen?  Besides,  what  if  they  should  take  it?  " 

"They  will  not,"  said  the  policeman,  philosophically. 
"The  habitual  crime  in  this  ward  is  not  theft.  It  is  first  of 
all  knifing,  and  prostitution  also.  They  sell  their  women  to 
the  Chinese  over  in  the  neighboring  district.  The  law  forbids 
yellow  women  to  live  in  the  United  States.  But  John  "  —  this 
is  the  American  nickname  for  the  natives  of  the  Celestial 
Empire  —  "John  has  a  great  liking  for  white  women,  and  he 
buys  as  many  as  he  can  with  the  money  he  earns  or  steals. 
For  theft  is  his  crime,  as  drunkenness  is  that  of  the  Irish. 
Here  is  their  street,"  he  concluded. 

Italian  signs  had  given  place  to  illegible  signs  in  characters 
of  the  extreme  Orient,  and  on  the  narrow  sidewalk,  which 
here  was  clean,  I  heard  the  clicking  of  the  thick  wooden  soles 
of  the  yellow  men.  Short  and  fragile,  with  smooth  faces 
under  their  round  hats,  with  black  braids  of  hair  rolled  up 
underneath  in  an  oily  chignon,  they  come  and  go  silently. 
Their  bodies  have  no  visible  form  under  their  wide-sleeved 
blue  blouses,  and  their  small  feet  have  still  less  under  the 
flapping  of  their  loose  pantaloons.  This  sort  of  delicate- 
featured  dwarfs,  with  their  loop-shaped  eyes,  so  black  in  their 
copper-colored  skin,  their  high  cheek-bones,  the  triangular 
framework  of  their  faces,  and  their  flat  noses,  gives  the  impres 
sion  of  an  invasion  of  beasts  that  would  spread  over  all  the 
city,  gain  and  gain  and  destroy  everything.  There  is  some 
thing  of  the  serpent  in  their  flat  faces,  and  an  enigmatic 
endurance  in  the  expression,  that  seems  to  receive  nothing 
from  the  surrounding  world. 

Since  we  had  left  the  Italian  street,  Bazarow  appeared  to 
have  himself  become  as  impassible  as  these  casual  foreigners. 
The  revolutionary  could  not  but  hate  them,  for  they  are  more 
dangerous  enemies  to  socialism  than  the  most  ferocious  capi- 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  191 

talist,  working  for  almost  nothing,  with  a  result  always  uni 
form,  ever  repulsed,  never  wearied,  fifteen  and  sixteen  hours 
on  a  stretch.  In  them  labor  feels  itself  disgraced;  and  it  is 
constantly  necessary  to  protect  them  from  the  wrath  of  their 
competitors  of  the  white  race,  whom  they  would  ruin  if  they 
were  left  free  to  do  it.  In  proportion  as  the  agitator  grew 
gloomy  the  detective  became  more  jovial.  He  found  these 
people  "great  fun."  He  went  into  all  their  shops,  handled 
all  their  wares,  clapped  them  all  on  the  shoulder  with  his 
broad  hand,  bursting  into  roars  of  laughter. 

The  little  yellow  men  winked  their  black  eyes  with  sly 
humor.  They  offered  us  their  wares, —  tea  enclosed  in  dainty 
boxes,  lacquers,  stuffs,  porcelains,  all  worthy  of  a  bazaar  of 
the  twentieth  order.  But  they  asked  exorbitant  prices,  and 
kept  on  smiling  when  we  discussed  them,  without  emotion 
and  without  insistence.  It  is  not  commerce  by  which  they 
live  in  New  York,  it  is  laundry  work.  They  undertake  it  at 
such  low  prices  that  they  have  monopolized  it;  they  need  so 
little  ! 

To  observe  their  diet  we  went  into  one  of  their  restaurants. 
Prepared  dishes,  which  showed  minute  handiwork,  were  wait 
ing  on  high  round  tables;  stuffed  oranges,  first  peeled  and 
then  reclothed  in  their  protecting  skins,  dressed  onions, 
hashes  in  green  leaves,  strange  crudities  betokening  entirely 
different  stomachs,  the  gastric  juice  accustomed  by  a  heredity 
of  a  hundred  centuries  to  dissolve  other  foods.  Everywhere 
the  long  straight  pipes  with  their  little  metal  furnace  betrayed 
the  traditional  vice, —  the  terrible  taste  for  opium. 

"  You  should  come  back  at  night  to  see  them  smoke ;  they 
work  by  day.  Between  the  two  they  have  not  much  time  for 
mischief.  If  they  alone  were  in  New  York,  Mr.  Byrnes  would 
not  be  so  busy." 

While  the  watch-dog  of  the  police  thus  muttered,  looking 
again  at  Bazarow,  the  countenance  of  the  latter  cleared  and 


192  OUTRE-MER 

brightened.  His  ironical  mouth  began  again  to  speak.  We 
were  now  in  the  midst  of  his  adherents,  for  we  had  passed 
from  the  Chinese  to  the  Jewish  quarter.  These  are  mostly 
Germans  and  Poles.  Ah !  the  invincible,  the  indestructible 
race,  which  I  find  just  like  itself,  just  what  I  have  seen  in  the 
lanes  of  Tangier  and  Beyrout  and  Damascus,  and  on  that 
height  of  Safed,  where,  in  the  synagogue,  the  old  rabbis  com 
ment  on  the  Talmud  and  proclaim  the  Liberator. 

Whence  came  the  poor  Jews  of  this  quarter?  Through  what 
abominable  Odysseys  of  persecution  have  they  come,  to  set 
out  in  this  quarter  of  New  York  such  displays  as  only  they 
and  the  Auvergnats  have  the  secret  of, —  these  stalls,  where 
the  merchant  finds  a  way  of  selling  the  unsalable, —  old  iron, 
old  buttons,  old  bits  of  wood,  old  rags?  These  indescribable 
shops,  with  their  refuse  of  refuse,  encroach  upon  the  side 
walk.  The  signs  are  now  in  Hebrew.  Newsboys  are  offering 
papers,  also  in  Hebrew.  There  are  swarms  of  children,  attest 
ing  that  fruitfulness  which  the  Book  promised  "  as  the  sand  of 
the  seashore."  Many  of  these  little  ones  have  eyes  of  mag 
netic  Oriental  brilliancy,  and  we  see  it  also  in  the  eyes  of  the 
women  who  are  living  in  all  this  poverty. 

Now  Bazarow  is  at  home.  He  moves  among  smiles  and 
salutations.  He  knows  every  one  and  every  one  knows  him. 
The  uncertain  steps  of  an  hour  ago  become  firm  to  guide  us. 
We  follow  him  into  several  workshops,  as  much  of  men  as  of 
women,  where  they  work  with  the  needle.  We  find  there, 
ranged  under  the  oversight  of  the  chief,  the  "boss,"  thin, 
patient,  masculine  faces  covered  with  hair,  with  enormous 
noses,  poor,  hollow,  feminine  chests,  shoulders  sharpened  by 
consumption,  girls  of  fifteen  as  old  as  grandmothers,  who  have 
never  eaten  a  bit  of  meat  in  their  lives, —  a  long,  lamentable 
succession  of  forms  of  poverty. 

We  could  hardly  endure  the  air  of  these  shops,  where  the 
odor  of  ill-cared-for  bodies  mingled  with  the  odor  of  spoiled 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  193 

food,  both  being  exasperated  by  the  heavy  odor  of  the  stove. 
We  asked  these  slaves  as  to  the  wages  they  earned.  Here  the 
figures  given  by  the  partisans  of  revolution  became  sadly 
correct,  a  correctness  which,  thus  certified,  wrung  the  heart. 
For  a  dozen  of  these  little  children's  trousers,  over  which 
these  hunger-hollowed  faces  were  bent,  the  contractor  pays 
seventy-five  cents.  The  worker  cannot  make  eighteen  in 
his  best  days,  by  not  losing  half  an  hour.  Twelve  shirts,  that 
consumptive  women  are  hurriedly  stitching,  with  needles  held 
in  feeble  hands  with  bent  finger-nails, —  yes,  twelve  of  these 
shirts, —  bring  thirty-one  cents,  and  the  worker  must  pay  for 
the  cotton !  And  even  these  prices  are  not  sure.  Within  a 
year  wages  have  been  lowered  one-half.  Who  can  say  what 
they  will  be  to-morrow?  Meanwhile,  they  must  sustain  life, 
but  how?  Plates  scattered  over  the  tables  make  reply,  filled 
as  they  are  with  scraps  that  would  disgust  a  famished  dog. 
These  embittered  lips  bite  into  them  with  an  avidity  that 
appals  you.  We  saw  a  twelve-year-old  girl  lay  down  her  work 
to  eat  where  she  sits.  She  was  so  pale,  so  emaciated,  that  tears 
would  have  come  to  our  eyes  though  the  agitator  had  not  said, 
in  a  declamatory  tone :  — 

"Is  it  not  a  shame  to  humanity?  " 

What  could  we  reply,  if  not  that  when  the  strike  came  this 
human  wretchedness  would  not  have  even  this  bone  to  gnaw? 

January  15.  —  About  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening,  a  fellow 
journalist  of  New  York,  Richard  Harding  Davis,  came  with 
two  friends  to  take  me  to  the  Bowery  for  a  nocturnal  expedi 
tion  to  succeed  that  by  daylight.  This  remarkable  author, 
one  of  the  first  short-story  writers  of  young  America,  is  a  man 
of  less  than  thirty  years,  with  a  strong  face,  square  and  hard- 
featured,  burned  red  by  the  sun,  a  snub  nose  and  a  square 
chin.  It  is  a  typical  face  of  this  side  of  the  water,  beardless 
and  forceful,  with  the  fine-cut  features  of  a  strong  physiog- 


194  OUTRE-MER 

nomy.  There  is  extreme  nervous  tension,  almost  exhaustion, 
in  the  lines  around  the  mouth  and  the  expression  of  the  eyes. 
And  yet  the  dominant  look  is  of  youth  and  health.  Back 
of  the  overburdened  journalist  and  romance-writer  you  can 
detect  the  near  presence  of  the  "Princeton  man,"  the  student 
who,  six  or  eight  winters  ago,  was  captain  of  some  great  foot 
ball  team ! 

On  leaving  the  University,  Davis  became  reporter  on  a  great 
Philadelphia  daily.  This  singular  calling  having  put  him  in 
touch  with  the  lowest  rabble  of  the  worst  parts  of  the  city,  the 
picturesque  qualities  of  these  refractories  awoke  the  artist 
within  him,  and  in  a  series  of  short  stories  he  has  pictured  a 
number  of  these  socially  doomed  characters,  of  which  one,  to 
which  I  have  already  alluded  more  than  once,  Gallegher,  is  a 
masterpiece.  In  him,  with  a  few  strokes,  of  matchless  pre 
cision,  he  has  painted  the  Gavroche  of  this  country,  the  un 
tamable  boy  with  nerves  of  steel  and  indomitable  will,  whom 
you  see  in  the  tramways  and  railroad  cars,  rushing  in  by  one 
door  and  out  at  another,  crying  his  wares,  newspapers,  novels, 
or  fruits,  in  a  high-pitched  voice.  There  is  both  humor  and 
tragedy  in  the  fifty  pages  of  this  story,  to  which  I  refer  the 
reader  who  may  be  curious  as  to  American  customs.  It  is  the 
result  of  an  observation  terribly  keen  and  yet  pathetic,  darkly 
realistic  and  yet  light-hearted.  A  sort  of  untamed  whimsi 
cality  works  out  in  healthiness  all  that  might  have  been  atro 
cious  in  this  etching  from  nature,  and  on  this  January  evening, 
when  we  were  rolling  in  a  carriage  toward  the  Bowery,  the 
paradise  of  those  whom  in  Paris  we  call  escarpes,  and  in  New 
York  "toughs  "  and  "roughs,"  Davis  was  the  very  talker  of  his 
story,  a  fanciful  humorist,  full  of  the  freshest  anecdotes  of 
these  grotesque  figures  of  vice  and  crime. 

For  example,  he  told  us  how  the  original  boy  who  posed 
for  him  as  Gallegher  went  to  the  newspaper  office  in  which  the 
sketch  appeared,  to  demand  his  share  of  the  author's  rights. 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  195 

He  described  himself,  going  out  from  his  father's  house  in 
Philadelphia,  in  evening  dress,  and  meeting  a  thief  with 
whom,  for  the  purpose  of  study,  he  had  fraternized  incognito 
in  a  low  gambling-house.  The  thief  approached  him  with  a 
wink : — 

"  What  are  you  doing  here  ?     Are  you  butler  in  this  house  ?  " 
And  as  the  writer  amused  himself  with  answering  in  the 
affirmative,  he  went  on, — 

"When  you  rob  it,  don't  forget  me.     I'll  be  in  with  you." 
On  this  good  promise,  with  a  hearty  hand  shake,  the  two 
parted. 

While  he  was  charming  us  thus  with  his  rendering  of  a 
coarse  conversation,  mimicked  with  a  sort  of  genius  which  ex 
plained  to  me  his  success  as  an  author,  that  gift  of  his  for 
making  his  words  flow  and  almost  gesticulate,  we  arrived  at 
the  central  police  station,  where  the  other  morning  I  had  seen 
Mr.  Byrnes  smile  into  the  face  of  the  courageous  Mr.  Clark. 
We  were  to  take  another  detective  this  evening,  who,  however, 
showed  the  same  broad  shoulders  and  the  same  quiet  intrepid 
ity  as  the  former.  Social  species  in  these  singular  callings 
work  out  a  uniformity  of  type  not  to  be  surpassed  by  natural 
species. 

This  one,  like  his  colleague,  professed  an  idolatry  for  Mr. 
Byrnes  and  a  passionate  love  of  his  calling.  As  a  hunter  of 
big  game  never  spares  you  a  single  one  of  the  lions  and  tigers 
that  he  has  shot,  and  spreads  out  before  you  skin  after  skin, 
showing  you  the  bullet  hole,  so  the  policemen  would  have  us 
look  over  hundreds  of  photographs  of  criminals  arrested  in 
New  York  during  the  last  few  years.  The  predominant  char 
acteristics  of  these  heroes  of  robbery  and  murder  are  a  wander 
ing  or  a  maniacal  expression,  and  sadness.  You  can  count  the 
laughing  faces  —  and  what  laughs  they  are !  insolent,  defiant, 
sneering.  Still  less  numerous  are  faces  that  reveal  intelli 
gence.  When  it  occurs,  it  is  so  concentrated,  so  visibly 


196  OUTRE-MER 

turned  in  upon  itself,  so  armed  and  defiant,  that  it  frightens 
you  even  in  this  impotent  reflection,  emanating  from  these 
inert  pictures.  I  think  that  if  ever  I  meet  them  in  life  I  shall 
recognize  the  eyes  of  one  of  these  photographs  among  others, 
those  of  a  man  of  thirty,  condemned  for  forgery,  whom  the 
detective  gazed  upon  with  undissembled  admiration,  murmur 
ing,  "He  was  a  great  man." 

As  in  memory  I  compare  this  collection  of  portraits  with  a 
similar  one  of  French  criminals,  which  I  have  had  in  my 
hands  in  Paris,  it  seems  to  me  that  those  of  this  country  are 
more  bitter,  more  sinister,  more  entirely  unclassed,  more 
implacable,  and  especially  more  perverse.  I  sought  in  vain 
among  them  for  the  features,  so  common  in  Latin  countries, 
of  the  man  who  has  fallen  through  weakness  —  the  near  neigh 
bor  of  him  who  remains  respectable  through  circumstances. 

Are  these  things  really  so,  or  have  I,  in  this  view,  taken  up 
with  general  theories,  so  natural  to  a  traveller?  Neither  did 
it  seem  to  me  that  the  collection  of  confiscated  articles  tend 
ing  to  prove  criminality  was  made  up  as  it  would  have  been 
made  with  us.  Roulette  tables  alternated  with  revolvers, 
night  sand-bags  with  burglars'  tools,  counterfeiters'  moulds 
and  dies  with  engraved  plates  for  counterfeit  bank  bills.  One 
would  say  that  thieves  were  more  industrious  here  and  —  how 
shall  I  express  it  ?  —  less  occasional  in  their  criminal  acts.  The 
detective  showed  us  a  saw  with  which  a  celebrated  criminal 
had  dismembered  the  corpse  of  his  victim.  To  wring  from 
him  a  confession  of  his  crime,  another  detective  conceived 
the  plan  of  walking  by  night  clothed  in  a  shroud,  and  moan 
ing,  up  and  down  a  corridor,  which  we  also  visited,  on  which 
the  criminal's  cell  opened.  The  murderer  believed  he  saw 
the  ghost  of  his  victim  and  confessed  his  crime. 

"For  all  that,"  said  one  of  our  companions,  in  disgust,  "it 
was  not  fair  play." 

That  is  the  true  Anglo-Saxon  cry,  with  all  the  innate  horror 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  197 

of  the  race  for  subterfuge  and  falsehood.  Hearing  it,  I  recall 
to  mind  a  similar  indignation  experienced  by  a  young  girl,  in 
whose  presence  was  related  a  story  of  the  delightful  hypocrisy 
of  a  Sicilian  prince  of  the  last  century.  Sick  unto  death,  he 
vowed  to  build  a  Chartreuse  if  he  should  recover.  He  did 
recover,  and  to  reconcile  his  devotion  with  his  avarice  he 
hit  upon  the  device  of  building  in  his  park,  at  the  gates  of 
Palermo,  a  pavilion  ki  the  form  of  a  monastery,  which  may  yet 
be  seen.  The  word  "Certosa"  still  adorns  the  entrance,  and 
the  half-score  of  cells  are  inhabited  by  the  figures  of  monks, 
but  in  wax,  among  which  is  found  an  Abelard  occupied  in 
writing  to  Heloise ! 

"What  a  shame  !  "  was  the  only  word  which  this  charmingly 
humorous  anecdote  called  from  the  American  girl's  lips.  She 
saw  in  it  only  a  want  of  conscience,  and  ignoble  insincerity. 
Our  friend  of  this  evening  is  not  far  from  the  same  judgment 
of  the  perfidy  used  in  the  matter  of  the  dissector  of  corpses, 
and  I  am  sure  he  will  not  willingly  give  his  hand  to  the  in 
ventive  policeman  who  devised  this  cunning  trick. 

Upon  this  discussion  we  went  downstairs  to  the  street,  and 
this  time  we  went  on  foot.  It  was  nine  o'clock,  and  already 
all  the  houses  were  closing.  Nocturnal  life  exists  only  in 
Paris.  In  New  York,  as  in  London,  all  the  house-fronts  are 
dark  long  before  midnight  strikes.  Only  the  "saloons"  con 
tinue  to  blaze  forth  from  the  ground  floors  of  buildings,  large 
and  small.  On  the  counters  are  prepared  by  the  score  such 
ingredients  as  were  wittily  defined  by  a  Bacchic  poet  of  Louis 
XIII. 's  time,  "spurs  to  much  drinking."  There  are  salted 
biscuits  and  smoked  fish,  ham,  and  fried  oysters.  A  betting- 
machine  stands  in  a  corner,  like  the  swivels  that  decorate  the 
wine  shops  of  Paris,  with  this  difference,  that  here  they  only 
play  for  whiskeys  or  cocktails,  and  also  that  the  ball  is  here 
replaced  by  a  whole  poker  deck.  One  of  those  ingenious 
inventions  which  the  American  is  never  weary  of  inventing 


198  OUTRE-MER 

causes  these  cards  to  come  and  go  under  glass  each  time  that 
a  silver  dollar  falls  into  a  slot  arranged  ad  hoc.  A  "full" 
appears,  or  a  sequence,  or  two  pairs,  or  a  flush,  or  some 
other  figure,  and  this  suffices  to  give  the  poor  devils  who  are 
playing  thus  their  evening  dissipation,  the  illusory  mirage  of 
such  a  game  as  they  like. 

They  are  standing  in  the  blinding  light  of  gas  or  electricity, 
already,  at  this  hour,  so  drunk  they  cannot  move.  Almost  all 
of  them,  even  in  this  low  part  of  the  town,  have  that  air  of  being 
fl//^///well  dressed,  which  gave  me  the  first  day  an  impression 
as  of  a  whole  city  dressed  from  a  shop  of  ready-made  clothes. 
How  many  have  I  seen,  Americans  of  all  classes,  dressed  in 
this  all  but  good  style,  carrying  a  tiny  valise  of  leather  paper, 
with  a  change  of  collar  and  cuffs !  In  the  morning  they  go  to 
the  barber's,  after  taking  a  bath  in  the  dressing-room  of  their 
hotel  bedroom.  One  negro  brushes  their  boots,  another  their 
hat  and  clothes.  A  narrow  line  of  white  linen  at  the  wrist 
and  neck,  and  above  the  large  Ascot  necktie  which  hides  the 
shirt  another  line  of  white  linen,  and  you  have  a  gentleman 
whose  neatness  will  hold  good  till  the  midnight  bar. 

They  end  by  going  into  one  of  these  bars.  From  eight  to 
a  dozen  "gentlemen  "  of  this  type  were  discussing  matters  over 
their  glasses,  in  which  preserved  cherries  were  floating  between 
slices  of  lemon.  For  the  moment  they  were  intensely  inter 
ested  in  comparing  the  chances  of  the  Californian,  Corbett, 
and  the  Englishman,  Mitchell,  who  were  to  have  a  match 
at  Jacksonville,  Florida.  A  number  of  portraits  of  cele 
brated  athletes,  in  fighting  costume,  which  hung  on  the 
walls,  bore  witness  to  the  admiration  of  the  saloon-keeper 
and  to  his  secret  business.  No  doubt  he  arranges  those 
clandestine  matches  which  Davis  has  so  accurately  described 
in  his  Gallegher,  tickets  of  admission  to  which  cost  a  hun 
dred,  or  two  hundred,  dollars.  He  was  a  German,  and 
with  his  crafty  bluish  eyes,  set  in  his  broad,  pallid  face,  he 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  199 

glanced  at  the  detective,  who  seemed  not  to  know  him,  though 
he  knew  him  very  well.  Both  indifference  and  a  feeling  of 
equality  spoke  in  that  glance.  With  the  secret  history  of 
elections  in  the  United  States,  who  can  tell  whether  a  simple 
saloon-keeper  is  not  one  of  the  chief  suborners  of  votes  for 
the  party  in  power?  Was  there  some  consciousness  of  this 
strength  in  the  calmness  of  this  German,  as  also  in  the  attitude 
of  the  infamous  customers  of  this  obscure  patron,  who  smoke 
great  cigars  at  half  a  dollar  apiece,  with  all  the  serenity  of  the 
gods  of  Lucretius?  They  appear  to  be  little  disturbed  by  the 
moral  campaign  announced  in  the  last  few  weeks.  Two  new 
visitors  came  into  the  resort,  and  talked  German  with  the 
liquor-dealer.  Decidedly,  New  York  is  not  only  the  true 
Cosmopolis  of  the  idle  and  the  dilettante,  but  a  monstrous 
crucible  in  which  all  the  adventurers  and  the  needy  of  the 
whole  world  meet,  mingle,  blend  together  to  form  a  new 
people.  What  people? 

Blend?  Does  this  intimate  mixture  of  elements,  so  far 
from  solvable,  which  we  call  "race,"  really  take  place?  As 
far  as  the  yellow  race  goes,  we  can  boldly  reply,  no.  What 
strange  power  keeps  these  people  so  unsusceptible  to  surround 
ings,  so  capable  of  abstracting  themselves  from  those  around 
them, —  insulating  themselves,  if  we  may  so  speak  ?  I  received 
a  new  proof  of  this  that  very  night,  as  I  left  that  den  to  go 
to  the  Chinese  theatre,  a  few  steps  distant. 

Upon  the  stage  the  actors,  men  disguised  as  women,  all 
painted  and  dressed,  —  painted  in  bright  colors  that  lacquered 
their  faces,  dressed  in  heavy  stuffs,  embossed,  embroidered, 
stiff  and  shining, —  act  or  rather  mimic,  with  slow,  infrequent 
gestures,  a  scene  in  an  interminable  play.  A  stringed  instru 
ment,  harsh  and  monotonous,  accompanied  this  phantom- 
like  representation  with  a  moaning,  creaking  sound.  What 
did  I  say  about  gestures?  During  the  half-hour  that  we  spent 


200  OUTRE-MER 

there  the  seven  actors  did  not  make  twenty  motions  between 
them. 

The  scene  represented  the  interior  of  a  pagoda  opening 
upon  a  garden,  and  called  forth,  no  doubt,  action  enough  to 
sustain  the  interest  of  a  public  who  utter  not  a  word,  and 
neither  laugh  nor  applaud. 

There  are  five  hundred  of  these  copper-colored  men  in  the 
audience,  motionless,  in  their  working  clothes,  every  one  like 
all  the  others,  in  his  round  hat,  his  braided  queue  of  black 
hair,  his  ample  blouse  of  dark  blue,  and  those  everlasting  ser 
pent  faces,  spanned  by  long,  shining,  inexpressive  eyes.  Not 
one  of  them  appears  to  observe  our  presence,  although  we 
must  have  made  some  noise  as  we  went  down  the  passage  be 
tween  the  seats  toward  the  stage.  You  feel  them  to  be  for 
eigners,  to  a  degree  inconceivable  —  impenetrable  and  above 
all  unintelligible.  These  unresolvable  differences  show  them 
selves  in  their  choice  of  amusement  and  its  quality;  for  our 
amusements  are  ourselves,  our  individuality,  our  tastes, 
whereas  our  labor  often  only  interprets  to  us  the  slavery 
of  our  surroundings. 

This  theatre,  and  the  hypnotic  automatism  of  the  play,  had 
nothing  in  common  with  the  sort  of  diversion  which  we 
seek  for  in  a  play.  And  in  the  same  way,  the  coarse  and 
mechanical  drunkenness  on  alcohol  —  our  drunkenness  —  has 
nothing  in  common  with  the  intellectual  poisoning  by  opium, 
which  is  ever  the  favorite  vice  of  these  people.  One  must 
see  how  some  of  them  abandon  themselves  to  the  delights  of 
this  terrible  drug,  immediately  on  leaving  the  theatre,  to  un 
derstand  how  this  mania  for  stupefactives  corresponds  in  these 
natures  to  profound,  and  doubtless  indestructible,  instincts. 
The  two  impressions  complete  one  another  with  singular 
power. 

On  leaving  the  theatre,  twenty  steps  brought  us  to  the  door 
of  one  of  the  cellar  rooms  which  serve  these  maniacs  as  dream 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  201 

caverns.  By  the  light  of  a  half-lowered  gas-burner,  we  saw 
an  emaciated  Chinaman  lying  on  a  matting  which  covered  a 
stone  bench  running  around  the  wall.  With  supple  fingers 
he  felt  about  in  a  pot  filled  with  a  blackish  substance.  With 
a  stout  metal  needle  he  adroitly  and  surely  rolled  up  a  thick 
pellet,  which  he  warmed  at  a  flame.  Then,  with  the  point  of 
the  same  needle,  without  haste,  with  the  same  adroit  and  accu 
rate  motion,  he  inserted  the  burning  pellet  in  the  metal  bowl 
of  his  pipe,  and  drew  a  few  whiffs.  The  pipe  was  smoked 
out,  and  he  began  operations  over  again,  his  eyes  swimming 
in  a  luxurious  languor.  Twenty  such  operations,  and  he  will 
be  like  the  stout  man  whose  figure  is  visible  in  the  depths  of 
the  cellar,  bloated,  livid,  and  motionless,  deep  in  visions, 
from  which  no  human  force  could  ravish  him. 

A  smiling  and  supple  personage — the  keeper  of  the  cellar  — 
runs  hither  and  thither,  preparing  pipes  and  opium  for  other 
customers,  who  are  awaiting  their  turn  to  abandon  themselves 
to  the  charm  of  this  mysterious  and  deadly  ecstasy.  The 
solitude  and  taciturnity  of  this  dissipation  make  the  place 
almost  tragic.  No  loud  voices,  not  even  a  word.  There  is 
a  solemnity  as  of  initiation  in  the  attitudes  to  which  the  devo 
tees  of  this  artificial  paradise  abandon  themselves,  and  this 
debauch  appears  at  once  less  vile  and  more  criminal,  less  dis 
gusting  and  more  incurable,  than  that  on  whiskey  or  brandy. 
Certainly  it  is  so  different  that  a  shudder,  as  of  a  nightmare, 
creeps  over  us,  and  we  leave  this  den  with  a  sense  of  relief. 

Chinese  lanterns  light  up  the  lower  end  of  the  street  with 
their  fantastic  light.  A  turn  of  the  corner,  and  they  have 
again  given  place  to  gas,  and  opium  to  alcohol.  Now  "sa 
loons"  follow  "saloons."  A  gigantic  and  obsequious  police 
man,  whom  the  detective  had  picked  up  to  guide  us  through 
the  opium  dens,  suddenly  stops  before  a  tall  building,  which 
he  points  out  with  a  gesture  of  pride. 

"Well,"  he  says,  with  most  comical  emphasis,  "you  may 


202  OUTRE-MER 

be  globe-trotters,  but  you  will  never  find  any  place  like  the 
Bismarck  of  New  York.  Do  you  want  to  go  in?  " 

We  assent,  and  he  explains  —  Oh  irony  of  human  glory !  — 
that  the  Bismarck  is  simply  a  lodging-house  at  twelve,  ten,  or 
seven  cents  a  night.  Immediately  entering  a  dark  passageway, 
we  saw  him  conferring  with  the  doorkeeper  of  this  dormitory 
of  poverty.  The  latter,  after  some  affected  objections, —  the 
prelude  to  a  tip  only  too  intelligible  to  one  who  knows  the 
lack  of  conscience  of  the  American  policeman, —  permits  us 
to  ascend  a  badly  lighted  staircase,  pervaded  with  an  abomi 
nable  odor.  A  door  opens  on  the  first  landing.  We  parley 
again,  and  enter  an  immense  room,  heated  almost  beyond  the 
breathing-point  by  a  colossal  iron  stove. 

There,  in  a  vapor  hardly  pierced  by  an  occasional  lamp,  we 
dimly  see  a  double  row  of  beds  of  rubber  cloth,  literally 
heaped  with  human  beings,  some  draped  in  remnants  of  rags, 
others  entirely  undressed.  The  wretches  were  all  plunged  in 
that  death-like  sleep  in  which  life  yet  renews  its  deepest  ener 
gies.  We  could  see  by  the  position  of  their  limbs  that  they 
had  not  lain  down,  but  fallen  down,  sunk  down,  exhausted 
as  they  were.  The  soles  of  their  feet,  black  with  the  mire  of 
the  streets,  told  of  aimless  wanderings  by  sidewalk  or  street. 
The  emaciated  faces  of  those  who  had  unragged  themselves  — 
one  must  create  words  to  describe  the  nameless  divestment  of 
these  nameless  tatters  —  followed  us  with  their  eyes,  passively, 
stupidly.  We  seemed  to  them  the  apparitions  of  a  dream, 
seen  through  the  double  vapor  of  this  heavy  air  and  of  their 
overwhelming  lassitude. 

Yet  these  sleepers  are  the  favored  ones.  The  sort  of  ham 
mock  in  which  they  are  reposing  must  be  a  singular  luxury, 
since  to  procure  such  ease  they  have  spent  two  cents  extra. 
Two  cents'  worth  of  bread !  Two  cents'  worth  of  whiskey,  of 
tobacco!  The  lodgers  of  the  floor  above  sleep  on  boards. 
Those  of  the  third  story,  on  the  floor  — -  hard  indeed,  in  itj? 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  203 

pestilential  promiscuity.  But  it  is  not  the  street,  it  is  not 
the  January  night,  so  cruel  to  poor  exhausted  flesh.  This  is 
the  thought  that  I  distinctly  read  on  the  delicate,  weary  face 
of  a  white-bearded  old  man,  who  had  taken  off  his  jacket, 
seated  on  the  floor  of  the  last  of  the  three  dormitories,  a  veri 
table  phantom  of  human  want,  never  to  be  forgotten,  with  the 
anatomy  of  his  emaciated  body,  with  tufts  of  grizzly  hair  on 
the  projecting  ribs. 

Looking  at  him,  I  recalled  to  mind  that  this  very  evening  I 
had  been  invited  to  a  ball  in  one  of  the  palaces  on  Fifth 
Avenue.  Without  regret  I  had  sacrificed  that  festivity  to  this 
visit.  The  house  rose  up  before  my  mind,  decorated  with 
roses  at  a  dollar  apiece,  illuminated  by  the  dress  of  women 
who  bear  on  their  persons  twenty-five,  a  hundred,  two  hun 
dred  thousand  francs'  worth  of  precious  stones.  The  cham 
pagne  which  is  poured  out  at  the  buffet  costs  five  dollars  a 
bottle.  And  the  roses  will  fade  before  any  one  has  so  much 
as  taken  the  time  to  inhale  the  sweetness  of  their  perfume,  and 
not  one  of  those  diamonds  and  rubies  has  dissipated  a  sad 
thought  of  those  who  wear  them,  and  these  lovely  lips  will 
barely  have  touched  the  cups  in  which  sparkles  the  monoto 
nous  beverage.  These  contrasts  between  the  frightful  reality 
of  certain  sufferings  and  the  useless  insanity  of  certain  luxu 
ries,  explain,  better  than  the  most  eloquent  theories,  why,  at 
certain  times,  a  rage  simply  to  destroy  such  a  society  takes 
possession  of  certain  minds. 

The  extortionate  policeman,  who  might  have  been  detailed 
to  mount  guard  over  that  ball,  as  he  has  been  charged  to  guard 
the  Bowery  lodging-houses,  is  as  proud  of  the  excess  of  poverty 
into  which  he  initiates  us  as  his  Fifth  Avenue  colleague  would 
be  of  the  ostentation  of  the  festivity.  He  jocularly  repeats 
his  former  remark :  — 

"Well,  have  you  seen  anywhere  in  the  world  such  a  place 
as  the  Bismarck?" 


204  OUTRE-MER 

And  standing  on  the  threshold,  breathing  the  free  night  air 
with  all  the  breadth  of  his  robust  lungs,  he  adds :  — 

"Now  you  know,  gentlemen,  how  much  a  breath  of  fresh 
air  is  worth." 

Decidedly,  this  humorist  is  determined  to  earn  his  fee;  for 
perceiving  that  we  are  moved  by  the  sight  of  that  inauspicious 
hostelry,  he  invites  us  to  dispel  these  visions  of  sadness  by 
a  descent  into  another  cellar,  inhabited  by  an  Italian.  "  There 
is  always  some  jollification  there,"  he  says. 

The  word  is  untranslatable,  like  the  jolly  from  which  it  is 
derived,  and  which  signifies  good-humored  gayety,  good- 
natured  practical  jokes,  a  certain  rough  grace  of  good  health. 
Upon  this,  I  ask  him  of  what  nationality  are  most  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Bismarck.  According  to  him,  Germans 
and  Irish  predominate.  Americans,  properly  so-called,  are 
rarely  found  there.  For  that  matter,  one  might  almost  think, 
on  exploring  the  lower  quarters  of  the  city,  that  there  are  none 
in  New  York,  or  else  that  they  are  all  rich,  so  many  are  the 
foreigners  we  have  met  to-night  and  the  other  night.  We  find 
more  foreigners  in  the  nocturnal  trattoria  to  which  our  guide 
introduces  us.  But  the  promised  jollification  is  limited  to  a 
sight  of  an  evidently  embarrassed  patron,  irritated  under  his 
constrained  politeness.  While  the  three  compatriots  with  whom 
he  was  conversing  went  on  smoking  their  long  cigars  of  chaff, 
and  emptying  their  fiasco  of  Chianti,  without  looking  at  us, 
the  big  haggard  man,  with  crafty  eyes,  assured  us,  in  a  tone 
which  suggested  the  penitentiary :  — 

"You  may  see  everything  in  my  house.  I  have  nothing  to 
hide."  He  repeated  "nothing  to  hide  —  nothing  to  hide," 
four  times  over.  What  act  of  conspiracy,  smuggling,  or  prosti 
tution  had  we  interrupted  by  our  entrance?  The  policeman 
must  have  known,  for  he  drew  us  out  of  the  cavern  with  as 
much  eagerness  as  he  had  before  used  in  urging  us  in.  He 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  205 

claimed  to  be  at  the  end  of  his  beat  and  we  left  him,  to  finish 
this  night  of  low  investigation  in  a  series  of  public  balls  and 
beer-gardens. 

January  18. —  This  morning,  D ,  K ,  and  I  paid  a 

visit  to  the  two  islands  in  the  East  River,  BlackwelPs  and 
Ward's,  where  are  the  insane  asylum  and  the  penitentiary. 
We  were  to  meet  Mr.  Clark,  the  detective,  who  accompanied 
us  the  other  day,  at  the  door  of  the  Tombs.  This  is  the 
municipal  prison  of  the  city,  containing  also  a  police  court 
and  a  court  of  special  sessions.  New  York  slang  has  bap 
tized  it  with  this  funereal  and  symbolic  title  because  of  the 
large  and  heavy  Egyptian  columns  of  the  peristyle. 

The  calling  of  a  detective  does  not  lend  itself  to  punctu 
ality  in  keeping  appointments,  and  Mr.  Clark  is  on  duty. 
He  sends  us  word  by  one  of  his  "policemen  "  that  he  will  join 
us  later  "if  he  gets  through  in  time,"  which  signifies  that  the 
worthy  bloodhound  is  on  the  scent;  who  knows,  perhaps  only 
a  few  steps  away,  in  one  of  these  streets?  Perhaps  the  crimi 
nal  that  he  is  tracing  is  still  hurriedly  treading  these  side 
walks  with  despairing  step,  casting  searching  glances  over 
the  houses  which  seem  to  us  so  insignificant,  but  which  to 
him  may  prove  an  asylum  or  a  place  of  destruction. 

They  stretch  out  in  long  rows,  commonplace,  enigmatic, 
betraying  no  secrets  that  they  may  have,  while  another  "car," 
then  an  elevated  railway,  then  another  "car,"  carry  us  to 
Bellevue  Hospital.  Close  by,  a  small  wooden  wharf  serves 
as  point  of  departure  for  the  ferry-boat,  which  daily  carries 
to  the  islands  the  men  and  women  under  sentence  and  rela 
tives  of  the  insane  persons.  A  cell-like  wagon  arrives  almost 
at  the  same  time  as  ourselves,  bringing  its  load  of  convicts. 
The  people  give  it  the  classic  nickname  of  "Black  Maria." 
Its  occupants,  who  will  not  return  until  after  months  or  years, 
if  ever  they  return,  get  down  carelessly.  They  are  swallowed 


206  OUTRE-MER 

up  in  rooms  arranged  in  the  sides  of  the  boat,  while  the  deck 
is  crowded  with  poor  folk,  women  especially,  carrying  baskets 
rilled  with  provision  for  some  unhappy  being,  to  whom  this  is 
all  that  remains  of  joy! 

The  boat  puts  off.  It  is  operated  by  men  in  brown  uniform, 
many  of  them  negroes;  they  are  working  out  here  their  purifi 
cation  from  a  long  sentence. 

We  begin  to  converse  with  the  "boss,"  while  the  strange 
floating  house  glides  over  the  curling  waters,  that  wash  against 
the  boat  with  loud  surgings.  We  pass  other  ferry-boats,  tugs, 
merchant  vessels.  A  sharp  wind  is  blowing,  the  sky  seems  as 
if  contracted  by  the  cold  tension  of  a  black  snow-cloud. 
The  shore  line  of  the  city  is  a  shabby,  so  to  speak  soiled, 
coast,  with  a  leprosy  of  mean  buildings  and  dark  beaches, 
where  are  collected  the  unclean  refuse  of  the  approach  to  a 
capital.  The  "boss,''  whose  trade  it  is  to  transport  poverty, 
folly,  and  crime  along  this  scene  of  buildings  and  rubbish, 
is  a  jovial  old  man,  who  serenely  chews  his  quid  and  ejects 
his  streams  of  saliva  while  watching  over  his  crew.  He  opens 
for  us  two  cabins,  into  which  he  has  bolted  the  guests  of  the 
"Black  Maria-" 

That  of  the  men  contains  about  ten  individuals.  Their 
debased  and  unexpressive  faces  do  not  even  speak  of  the  reso 
lution  of  "tramps,"  as  they  call  the  wayfarers  whom  one  sees 
trailing  along  the  New  York  streets,  picking  up  ends  of  cigars 
with  pride.  The  women  seem  more  vivacious  and  more  tragic. 
There  are  seven:  three  Irish,  three  Germans,  one  negress. 
The  seventh  alone  is  a  true  American.  Of  the  unhappy  creat 
ures  who  compose  the  crew,  those  who  are  not  black  are  also 
all  Europeans. 

The  "boss"  points  out  a  Frenchman  who  has  strayed  in 
among  the  others.  He  is  from  Picardy,  and  came  to  the 
United  States  after  the  war.  Why  ?  He  does  not  confess  this 
any  more  than  the  crime  that  brought  him  first  to  the  peni- 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  207 

tentiary  and  afterward  to  this  boat.  He  tells  us  of  his  arrival 
here,  the  first  few  years,  his  solitude,  the  too  hard  work  — 
he  was  a  slater  —  the  too  implacable  people.  He  is  probably 
telling  the  truth  on  these  points;  you  feel  that,  by  the  severity 
of  his  words.  No  trace  of  his  fine  national  humor  survives  in 
him,  not  even  the  mocking  flattery  by  which  the  Latin  takes 
his  last  and  useless  revenge,  when  he  is  vanquished  by  too 
severe  civilization.  He  is  really  too  thoroughly  vanquished. 

Perceiving  his  wretchedness  in  infamy,  I  regret  less  that  the 
figure  of  French  immigration  into  this  terrible  country  is  so 
low.  Statistics  figure  it  at  fifty  thousand  four  hundred  and 
sixty  heads  in  the  last  ten  years.  On  the  other  hand,  America 
has  received  during  the  same  period,  a  million  four  hundred 
and  fifty-two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  fifty-two  Germans. 
What  a  formidable  sum  of  certain  temptations,  of  probable 
crime,  is  represented  by  such  an  afflux  of  adventurers !  One 
shudders  at  it,  when  one  examines  some  authentic  examples 
taken  from  life. 

There  is  the  same  singular  collection  of  foreigners,  male 
and  female,  between  the  walls  of  the  two  asylums  for  the  in 
sane  which  we  visited;  the  first  on  the  more  distant  island, 
Ward's,  the  second  on  the  nearer,  Blackwell's.  But  for  this 
peculiarity,  which  proves  how  disastrous  is  the  over-pressure 
of  American  life  to  nervous  systems  not  native  to  the  country, 
these  buildings  are  like  others  of  the  same  kind  in  all  lands. 
I  shall  long  see  before  me  among  the  men  a  German  from 
Koenigsberg,  who  believed  himself  to  be  the  old  Emperor 
William;  with  his  curled  moustache,  he  talked  and  swore, 
marching  up  and  down  with  threatening  gestures.  And  among 
the  women  I  shall  not  soon  forget  a  Norwegian,  with  soft, 
sea-colored  eyes,  who  sat  at  the  piano  and  played  a  vague  air, 
a  thousand  times  repeated. 

Both  buildings  are  kept  with  that  perfect  adaptation  of  ma 
terial  convenience  which  distinguishes  America  and  England. 


208  OUTRE-MER 

The  principle  here,  as  I  had  already  observed  when  visiting 
the  Boston  hospitals,  is  to  assure  autonomy  to  each  establish 
ment.  Each,  from  the  least  to  the  greatest,  must  suffice  for 
itself.  Each  must  have  its  own  bake-shop,  its  own  laundry, 
and  its  own  laboratory  for  preparing  its  own  medicines. 

With  this  independence  of  each  establishment  there  is 
much  more  freedom  of  initiative.  If  there  is  an  experiment 
to  try,  an  invention  to  apply,  there  is  no  need  of  going  through 
administrative  red  tape  and  awaiting  an  order  from  the  cen 
tral  power.  Each  one  makes  its  own  conditions,  and  this 
absence  of  official  supervision,  so  much  admired  by  people 
so  highly  centralized  as  we,  may  well  have  its  disastrous  as 
pects.  We  received  that  impression  from  a  few  words  which 
one  of  the  doctors  said  to  us  with  an  air  of  triumph,  We  had 
asked  to  see  the  violent  cases. 

"We  have  none  here,"  he  replied. 

"How  is  that?"  we  asked. 

"We  have  none,"  he  repeated. 

"But  if  those  who  are  not  violent  should  become  so?" 

"Oh,"  he  replied,  "we  should  soon  quiet  them." 

"May  we  see  your  appliances?  " 

"We  have  no  appliances,"  replied  the  physician,  proudly; 
"we  believe  that  physical  constraint  is  degrading  to  the  pa 
tient;  we  prefer  to  use  chemical  restraint." 

"They  drug  them  to  death,"  whispered  K . 

Was  he  right?  After  this  we  always  imagined  that  we  saw 
in  the  eyes  of  those  we  met  the  numb  stupor  of  opium  or 
morphine,  although  the  doctor  affirmed  that  both  these  sub 
stances  are  forbidden.  A  gloomy  terror  seemed  to  reign  over 
the  asylum  for  men,  while  in  that  of  the  women  we  were 
touched  by  an  air  of  pleasantness,  almost  of  gayety. 

The  halls  and  corridors  were  hung  with  flowered  paper; 
Christmas  trees,  with  their  fruits  of  stuffed  cotton,  still  re 
mained  from  the  festival  of  the  preceding  month.  Bananas 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  209 

of  yellow  cloth  alternated  with  oranges  of  red  plush.  The 
tender  home  instinct,  imperishable  in  the  heart  of  woman,  and 
that  maternal  instinct  that  abides  even  through  insanity,  had 
suggested  to  the  inmates  a  graceful  and  touching  thought  — 
that  of  placing  around  the  Christmas  trees  large  dolls,  dressed 
in  warm  garments,  to  take  the  place  of  the  children  for  whom 
they  had  imagined  themselves  to  be  preparing  their  gifts. 
And  yet,  with  all  the  care  they  had  taken  thus  to  adorn  their 
place  of  confinement,  they  were  truly  prisoners,  and  they 
knew  it.  All  of  them  said  in  thought  what  one  of  them  said 
aloud, —  a  white-haired  negress  who  was  giving  a  warm  cloak 
to  another.  The  latter  laughed  with  pleasure  at  the  warmth 
of  the  garment. 

"How  happy  she  is,"  said  one  of  our  party.  "What  more 
can  she  want?" 

"To  be  free,"  replied  the  old  blackamoor,  and  both  paused, 
the  one  in  her  kindly  adjustment  of  the  garment,  the  other  in 
her  laugh,  and  looked  toward  the  window,  with  the  longing 
eyes  of  a  caged  animaL 

And  how  sad  a  reminder  of  liberty  was  the  view  from  that 
window !  the  broad  island  plain,  sterile  and  bare.  Sorry  trees 
grew  here  and  there  in  shapeless  fields,  greenish  with  a  scraggy, 
worn-out  turf,  across  which  meandered  the  gray  lines  of  unused 
paths.  The  clouds  hung  low  in  the  sky;  in  the  distance  were 
two  barrack-like  buildings.  One  is  the  workhouse,  the  charity 
building,  the  other  is  the  penitentiary. 

We  finished  our  day  by  a  visit  to  this  prison.  Mr.  Clark 
was  now  our  guide ;  we  found  him  waiting  for  us  outside  the 
insane  hospital.  How  did  the  police  watch-dog  know  that  we 
were  there  —  precisely  there  and  nowhere  else  ?  We  did  not 
particularly  wonder  at  this  small  proof  of  his  professional  scent, 
any  more  than  at  the  carriage  which  he  had  found  for  us  — 
where  ?  —  in  this  desert  plain, 
p 


210  OUTRE-MER 

We  had  not  been  ten  minutes  in  it  when  we  began  to  see 
convicts  laboring  in  some  earthworks.  But  for  their  uni 
forms  of  white,  with  broad  dark  stripes,  we  might  have  taken 
them  for  workingmen  at  their  ordinary  task.  Absorption  in 
work  is  so  essential  a  characteristic  of  American  life  that  these 
convicts  seemed  not  different  from  free  workmen.  Their 
countenances  were  not  more  sad  than  those  of  engineers  on 
their  locomotives,  or  smelters  in  their  foundry. 

The  prisoners  became  more  frequent  as  we  drew  nearer  to 
the  huge  building  on  the  height.  Arriving  there,  we  had  no 
need  to  parley,  as  at  the  door  of  the  Bismarck.  Our  guide 
felt  himself  quite  at  home  in  these  great  barracks,  of  which 
he  is  one  of  the  most  skilful  purveyors.  We  followed  him 
through  them,  especially  interested  in  the  rows  of  cells,  in 
which  we  again  perceived  the  spirit  of  the  country.  Their 
strong  iron  gratings  opened  upon  a  broad  passageway,  afford 
ing  the  greatest  facilities  for  surveillance.  They  are  narrow, 
high,  and  so  arranged  as  to  admit  of  two  superimposed  beds, 
like  those  of  a  steamer  cabin.  A  placard  above  the  door  bore 
the  names  of  the  inmates. 

I  read  a  few  of  these,  corroborating  my  recent  observa 
tions  ;  most  of  them  are  not  of  this  country.  The  terms  are 
short,  —  six  months,  a  year,  two  years  at  most.  In  general,  a 
fine  is  added  of  one,  two,  or  five  hundred  dollars.  When  the 
convict  has  no  money,  he  works  out  his  fine  at  the  rate  of  a 
dollar  a  day.  The  fare  is  decent,  almost  comfortable  when 
one  thinks  of  the  bitter  poverty  of  the  Bowery.  The  men  are 
called  up  at  half-past  five ;  at  half-past  six  they  have  bread 
and  coffee,  at  noon  they  have  meat,  at  half-past  five  bread, 
soup,  and  coffee.  At  six  they  are  locked  in,  with  permission  to 
read  until  ten. 

Their  librarian  was  seated  at  a  table  in  one  of  the  galleries, 
classifying  tickets.  Even  in  his  convict's  dress,  his  intelligent 
and  serious  countenance,  his  white  hands  and  quiet  application, 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  211 

attested  the  "  gentleman."  He,  too,  was  a  foreigner,  an  Eng 
lishman  of  excellent  family,  guilty  of  having  enjoyed  club  life, 
sport,  gaming,  and  general  elegance,  by  means  of  checks  too 
dextrously  made.  He  was  here  employed  in  the  work  for 
which  he  appeared  to  be  best  fitted,  and  this  is  the  case  with 
all  of  them. 

The  workshops  were,  therefore,  filled  with  workmen,  who 
do  excellent  work  at  a  low  cost.  In  pavilions  surrounding 
the  central  building  there  was  a  forge  and  a  cabinet  shop, 
a  shoe  factory  and  a  locksmithy,  and  so  on  through  the  whole 
range  of  trades.  We  saw  rows  of  tailors,  painters,  book 
binders,  clockmakers,  peacefully  at  work.  They  would  have 
needed  only  to  have  lived  this  way  in  their  time  of  freedom 
to  be  happy.  And  yet  if  their  freedom  were  given  them,  not  one 
of  them,  Mr.  Clark  assured  us,  would  maintain  in  the  slightest 
degree  the  habit  of  work  which  they  now  seem  to  have  formed. 
Most  of  them  are  recidivists  who  have  taken,  quitted,  and 
taken  again  the  road  to  the  disciplinary  workshop,  without  this 
active  use  of  their  hours  of  servitude  in  the  least  affecting  their 
perverse  wills. 

What  part  of  their  internal  machinery  is  it  that  is  so  radically 
perverted  ?  In  this  land  of  all  enterprises  they  have  tried  to 
create,  not  very  far  from  here  at  Elmira,  a  reformatory,  a  sort 
of  rural  hospital,  precisely  that  they  may  reach  this  hidden 
spring.  It  appears  not  to  have  had  much  success,  and  hence 
they  are  coming  to  the  pessimistic  conclusion  that  the  best 
solution  of  these  problems,  as  of  all  that  touch  upon  social 
maladies,  is  simply  an  efficient  police  force.  The  thought  is 
too  terrible,  and  yet  it  seems  to  be  only  too  much  in  keeping 
with  human  nature.  Some  men  are  born  foxes,  wolves,  and 
tigers ;  others  are  born  watch-dogs.  I  came  to  this  view  of 
the  fundamental  duality  of  the  human  race  while  walking  the 
streets  of  New  York  behind  Bazarow  and  Mr.  Clark.  It  struck 
me  again  as  I  heard  the  latter  say  aloud :  — 


212  OUTRE-MER 

"  Ha  !  There  is  my  quarry  !  "  And  he  pointed  to  a  turner, 
a  young  fellow  of  twenty  years,  broad-shouldered  and  sturdy, 
with  a  coarsely  vicious  face. 

"  I  arrested  him  with  this  hand,"  said  Mr.  Clark,  opening 
and  closing  his  hairy  hands.  The  convict  leaned  over  his  work 
without  appearing  to  recognize  the  detective,  but  he  turned  as 
soon  as  Mr.  Clark  had  walked  on,  and  followed  him  with  an 
expression  of  mingled  fear  and  hatred,  speaking  at  the  same 
time  a  few  words  to  his  neighbor.  But  Mr.  Byrnes's  bulldog 
cared  no  more  for  that  than  the  dog  that  ran  down  one  hart 
and  is  chasing  another  cares  for  the  former's  furious  or  sup 
pliant  glare. 

I  might  extract  hundreds  of  such  pages  from  my  travelling- 
journal.  Will  these  suffice  to  make  concrete  the  objection 
urged  by  my  New  York  friend  against  the  somewhat  official 
and  determined  optimism  of  the  two  great  Catholic  arch 
bishops?  At  any  rate,  they  will  suffice  to  throw  a  full  light 
upon  the  fact  which  appears  to  me  to  dominate  the  entire  his 
tory  of  the  social  movement  in  the  United  States,  and  to  explain 
its  apparent  contradictions. 

This  fact  is  the  presence  in  the  lower  classes  of  a  foreign 
contingent  so  considerable  that  at  certain  times  the  American, 
born  in  America,  of  American  parents,  seems  to  be  a  sort  of 
aristocrat ;  too  proud  to  serve  any  master  whatever,  too  intel 
ligent  to  subject  himself  to  small  details  of  business,  naturally 
destined  by  virtue  of  his  inventive  genius,  perseverance,  will, 
to  draft  into  his  service  these  hordes  of  immigrants  whose  labor 
he  unfeelingly  uses  and  pays  for. 

This  paradox  hardly  overstates  the  truth.  To  be  convinced 
of  this  it  needs  only  to  examine  a  table  of  statistics  —  in  one  of 
the  almanacs  issued  every  year  by  the  newspapers,  for  exam 
ple  ;  and  these  incontestable  figures  give  a  still  more  significant 
import  to  this  foreign  contingent  when  one  has  just  visited  the 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  213 

parts  of  New  York  where  Italians,  Germans,  Irish,  Poles,  Jews, 
and  Chinese  swarm  and  struggle  in  poverty. 

In  the  first  place,  observe  that  this  formidable  immigration  is 
entirely  of  recent  date.  From  1789  to  1820  hardly  two  hun 
dred  and  fifty  thousand  colonists  left  Europe  for  the  United 
States,  or  only  nine  thousand  men  a  year.  The  newcomers  of 
this  period  were  very  soon  taken  up  into  the  American  organ 
ism,  which  still  possesses  a  remarkable  power  of  assimilation. 
But  assimilation  has  its  limits.  And  figures  show  the  gradual 
rising  of  the  flood  which  by  degrees  passed  these  limits. 

After  1820  the  number  of  immigrants  increased  year  by  year 
tenfold,  almost  a  hundredfold.  It  reached  twenty-three  thou 
sand  three  hundred  and  twenty- two  in  1830,  eighty-four  thou 
sand  and  sixty- six  in  1840.  The  result  of  the  events  of  1848 
and  1849  was  to  carry  these  figures  in  1850  to  three  hundred 
and  sixty-nine  thousand  seven  hundred  and  eighty-six.  The 
Franco-German  War  and  the  Commune  reacted  still  more 
strongly  upon  this  invasion  of  the  New  World  by  the  desperate 
inhabitants  of  the  Old.  In  the  year  1872  four  hundred  and 
five  thousand  eight  hundred  and  six,  in  1873  f°ur  hundred 
and  fifty-nine  thousand  eight  hundred  and  three  expatriated 
men  came  here  to  seek  —  what?  They  themselves  did  not 
know. 

We  must  look  at  totals  in  order  to  gauge  as  a  whole  the 
astounding  phenomenon  of  a  tide  of  men,  or  rather  of  nations, 
breaking  upon  this  continent.  In  the  two  decades  before  the 
present  one,  the  United  States  received  from  Europe,  between 
1871  and  1880,  more  than  three  million  immigrants;  between 
1 88 1  and  1890,  more  than  five  and  a  half  millions.  The  popula 
tion  was  therefore  increased  one-twelfth  in  these  last  ten  years, 
by  means  of  foreign  accession,  and  this  accession  was  solely, 
exclusively  composed  of  workingmen. 

Look  through  any  guide-book  you  like,  you  will  find  that  in 
Chicago,  out  of  about  eleven  hundred  thousand  inhabitants, 


214  OUTRE-MER 

there  are  four  hundred  thousand  Germans,  two  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  Irish,  ninety  thousand  Norwegians,  Danes, 
and  Swedes,  fifty  thousand  Poles,  fifty  thousand  Bohemians. 
In  Milwaukee  two  hundred  and  five  thousand,  or  more  than 
half  the  population,  are  Germans.  There  are  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  Germans  in  St.  Louis.  Denver,  which  in  1880  had 
thirty-five  thousand  inhabitants,  now  has  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand,  an  increase  of,  say,  a  hundred  and  fifteen  thousand, 
all  minors  and  foreigners.  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis  are 
Scandinavian  cities,  and  San  Francisco  is  entirely  peopled 
with  immigrants  from  all  parts,  including  twenty-five  thousand 
Chinese. 

In  the  face  of  such  evidences  of  an  interior  invasion  so 
impetuous  and  so  recent,  we  must  see  that  the  majority  of 
the  newcomers  cannot  possibly  be  Americans  except  in  name. 
The  United  States  did,  indeed,  assimilate  the  newcomers  with 
marvellous  rapidity  so  long  as  work  was  chiefly  in  the  fields, 
while  the  great  modern  cities  did  not  yet  exist;  before  1840 
there  was  not  a  single  city  in  America  of  more  than  five 
hundred  thousand  souls.  Especially  when  these  newcomers, 
immediately  scattered  abroad  upon  farms,  did  not  form  a 
compact,  almost  solid  crowd,  as  irresistible  and  formidable  as 
one  of  the  elements. 

This  assimilating  power  was  still  miraculous  thirty  years  ago, 
when  the  War  of  Secession  recreated  and  strengthened  Ameri 
can  self-consciousness  in  a  community  of  discipline  and  danger. 
One  proof  among  a  thousand  may  be  given,  —  very  slight  but 
very  remarkable.  Before  this  war  the  Germans,  under  pretext 
of  athletic  meetings,  had  founded  a  group  of  revolutionary  soci 
eties  with  the  title  Socialistischer  Turnenbund.  Before  1860 
they  were  all  radical,  international,  and  Germanic.  At  the  close 
of  the  war  they  had  all,  very  naturally,  become  national  and 
conservative,  in  a  word,  American.  But  in  the  last  thirty  years 
by  what  means  can  this  assimilation  have  been  exercised  over 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  215 

these  serried  masses  hastily  engulfed  in  the  labor  of  great  indus 
trial  cities  ? 

All  these,  landed  but  yesterday,  may,  indeed,  dye  themselves 
with  Americanism,  which  for  them  generally  means  to  drop  off 
the  feeble  remnant  of  moral  prejudice  which  clung  to  them  from 
their  previous  life.  They  even  learn  to  speak  the  language 
brokenly,  though  the  greater  number  of  them  continue  to  use 
their  native  tongue.  The  proof  of  this  is,  that  always  in  the 
courts  accused  and  witnesses  are  interrogated  through  inter 
preters.  It  would  be  folly  to  suppose  that  their  ideas  have 
changed,  their  deepest  aspirations  been  modified,  their  soul,  in 
fact,  metamorphosed.  Once  upon  the  soil  of  the  United  States, 
they  remain  the  violent,  desperate  folk  that  they  were  upon  the 
steamer ;  all  the  more  that,  in  this  country  of  their  last  illusion, 
they  have  met  the  same  necessity  for  work  as  in  the  Old  World, 
and  a  still  sharper  competition.  They  landed  with  all  the  moral 
dispositions  of  which  revolutionaries  are  made,  and  they  have 
remained  revolutionaries,  ready  to  follow  those  of  their  number 
who  have  brought  hither  from  Europe  their  fierce  and  feverish 
Utopias,  their  furor  for  agitation,  and  their  methods  of  organi 
zation. 

Thus  is  explained  the  sudden  development  in  this  free 
democracy  of  a  socialism  most  incompatible  with  all  the  past 
of  the  United  States,  with  all  their  tendencies  and  their  con 
stitution,  bursting  out  in  disorders  as  formidable  as  the  recent 
strikes  of  Chicago  and  California,  in  adventures  as  grotesquely 
threatening  as  the  formation  of  the  Coxey  army  and  its  march 
upon  Washington.  Look  closely  at  it.  These  episodes  pre 
sage  not  a  social  war,  but  a  war  of  races. 

The  true  American  workingman  —  for  he  exists  —  is  just 
such  a  man  as  Monsignors  Gibbons  and  Ireland  depicted, 
respectful  to  law,  proud,  above  all,  of  the  Constitution  which 
he  loyally  obeys,  and  without  hatred  of  capital.  At  his  side 


216  OUTRE-MER 

swarms  the  immense  crowd  of  workingmen  of  foreign  race, 
ignorant  of  the  history  of  a  country  which  is  to  them  only 
a  last  card  to  play  against  destiny,  not  understanding  this 
country,  —  I  might  say  hating  it  for  all  the  disappointments 
they  have  undergone. 

A  few  months  ago,  going  along  the  Missouri,  I  was  gazing 
upon  the  former  America  of  other  days,  through  the  America 
of  to-day,  and  the  first  struggle  for  extermination  between  the 
redskins  and  the  Anglo-Saxons  of  the  last  century.  This  first 
outgrowth  of  civilization  ends  again  in  a  conflict  between  men 
of  alien  blood.  Will  the  Grand  Republic,  issued  from  the 
first  Massachusetts  colonists,  so  closely,  so  necessarily  Anglo- 
Saxon  in  language  and  laws,  uprise,  be  broken  and  destroyed 
by  these  foreign  elements,  these  last  few  years,  seeing  that 
she  seems  no  longer  to  absorb  and  transform  in  the  same  way 
as  formerly?  Class  struggle  is  here  only  an  appearance;  at  the 
bottom  is  an  ethnic  duel,  and  one  may  follow  its  motions  in 
the  history  of  the  "labor  movement,"  as  they  say  here,  detail 
by  detail,  almost  year  by  year. 

One  of  the  best-informed  economists  of  this  country,  Pro 
fessor  Richard  Ely,  has  written  this  history  with  much  con 
scientiousness  and  impartiality.  Although  he  has  placed 
himself  simply  at  the  point  of  view  of  an  analyst,  the  succes 
sion  of  facts,  as  he  gives  them,  shows  at  once  the  alternation 
of  one  current  with  the  other,  the  American  current  and  the 
foreign,  in  this  vast  flood  of  the  laboring  inundation.  Thus 
also,  at  their  confluence,  the  two  shades  of  color  in  the  waters 
persist  long  without  mingling. 

Would  you,  first  of  all,  see  the  American  soul  at  its  work? 
See  it  struggling  with  those  first  experiments  in  communistic 
organization  which  it  attempted,  and  which  in  madness  of 
principle  exceed  the  worst  Utopias  of  the  most  extravagant 
collectivism.  You  will  find  this  soul  here  like  itself, —  all 
will  and  in  consequence,  first  of  all,  occupied  with  problems 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  217 

of  responsibility;  —  all  action  and  in  consequence,  deeply, 
thoroughly  realistic  in  the  details  of  its  enterprise,  even  when 
the  final  aim  is  a  chimera. 

For  example,  there  is  the  community  of  Perfectionists  at 
Oneida,  senseless  as  it  was  in  its  first  conception.  A  graduate 
of  Yale  founded  it,  in  company  with  other  graduates  of  the 
same  university.  These  young  men  were  so  exhilarated  with 
their  absurd  logic  that  they  included  free  love  in  their  scheme, 
on  the  ground  that  exclusivism  is  no  less  culpable  where  the 
person  than  where  property  is  concerned.  When  you  study  the 
practical  regulations  of  a  society  whose  principles  are  so  con 
trary  to  the  most  profound  instinct  of  human  nature,  you  are 
thunderstruck  on  seeing  men,  of  doctrines  so  Utopian,  become 
psychologically  most  wise  and  accurate  in  their  application. 
To  cite  only  one  illustration,  you  will  find  mutual  criticism 
an  organic  feature  of  this  singular  community,  the  right  of 
public  and  reciprocal  criticism,  "in  order,"  they  say,  "to 
utilize  the  wasted  power  of  observation  which  in  the  world  is 
squandered  in  gossip  and  useless  slander."  Look  into  the 
financial  result  of  their  experiment,  and  you  will  be  convinced 
of  their  sagacious  administration  by  the  balance-sheet  of  their 
final  settlement.  Having,  in  1881,  abandoned  their  plan  of 
reform  and  resolved  themselves  into  a  simple  co-operative 
society,  their  assets  were  found  to  be  six  hundred  thousand 
dollars  for  two  hundred  persons,  or  three  thousand  dollars 
apiece.  They  had  begun  with  the  most  insignificant  capital. 

So  with  another  community,  not  less  exceptional  in  its 
principles,  the  Shakers  of  Mount  Lebanon.  Under  their 
religious  mysticism,  their  ruling  characteristic  is  a  wise  and 
practical  acquaintance  with  the  true  conditions  of  human  life. 
Daniel  Fraser,  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  brethren,  used  con 
tinually  to  say :  — 

"The  two  bases  of  morality  are  the  cultivation  of  the  soil 
and  hygiene." 


218  OUTRE-MER 

Regular  habits,  a  scientifically  arranged  diet,  well-drained 
houses,  well-ventilated  rooms,  and  a  carefully  supervised  tem 
perature, —  to  these  minute  details  their  ethic  condescends, 
and  to  still  more  humble  ones.  "At  Mount  Lebanon,"  says 
Professor  Ely,  "  I  learned  to  close  a  door  so  softly  that  no  one 
could  hear  the  slightest  sound.  '  That  is  a  lesson  in  Shaker- 
ism/  Daniel  Fraser  said  to  me;  'it  is  Shakerism  reduced  to 
the  finest  point.'  " 

Here  you  recognize,  under  an  artless  form  provocative  of 
smiles,  a  scrupulosity,  a  watchfulness  over  self,  which  is  itself 
only  one  instance  of  their  acute  sense  of  responsibility.  You 
find  in  it  also  the  same  innocent  realism  of  conventual  life  by 
which  monks  so  quickly  became  rich  from  the  smallest  be 
ginnings.  Everything  holds  together  in  such  communities, 
and  such  a  degree  of  discipline  can  hardly  exist  without  a 
superior  degree  of  the  virtues  of  order  and  economy.  Is  not 
this  pretty  far  removed  from  the  sphere  in  which  modern 
revolutions  have  broken  forth? 

But  the  social  experiments  of  the  Perfectionists  and  the 
Shakers  were  entirely  isolated  and  arbitrary.  The  character 
istics  of  the  popular  soul  in  the  United  States  are  more  clearly 
marked  in  the  development  of  the  simple  labor  associations. 
For  these  associations  have  really  been  the  work  of  the  laboring 
men,  a  sort  of  stock  of  civic  implements  made  by  themselves 
for  their  own  interest  and  according  to  their  profound  needs. 

Here  the  two  currents  are  the  more  clearly  visible,  because 
the  second  appeared  at  a  considerable  time  after  the  first. 
Until  after  the  War  of  Secession,  the  societies  founded  by 
workingmen,  almost  without  exception,  manifested  the  dis 
tinctive  features  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  in  its  American 
variety.  First,  there  were  the  trades-unions,  entirely  pro 
fessional  and  local,  like  those  of  England;  for  instance,  the 
typographical  union  of  New  York  and  that  of  house  carpenters 
in  Boston,  founded  in  1812. 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  219 

The  programme  of  the  latter  society  falls  into  the  line  of 
those  minds  of  which  Robinson  will  ever  be  the  ideal  type, 
perfectly  indifferent  to  vast  general  theories,  but  positive, 
moral,  with  a  very  individual  power  of  initiative  in  the  ser 
vice  of  their  own  interests,  and  with  ardent  Christian  convic 
tions.  The  charter  of  the  carpenters  shows  that  they  combined 
with  intent  themselves  "to  govern  their  own  affairs,  to  ad 
minister  their  own  funds,  to  study  the  inventions  peculiar  to 
their  art,  to  assist  the  unemployed  by  loans  of  money,  to  sup 
port  the  sick  and  their  families." 

If  one  had  talked  with  these  fine  fellows  of  a  universal 
reform,  if  one  had  advocated  a  forcible  reconstruction  of  the 
relations  of  employers  and  employed,  a  crusade  of  labor  against 
capital,  they  certainly  would  not  have  understood  the  meaning 
of  such  dangerous  words.  They  desired,  as  laborers,  to  im 
prove  their  condition  as  laborers,  because,  in  fact,  that  is  the 
only  practical  and  moral  way,  at  once  conformed  to  the  precept 
to  render  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  at  the 
same  time  truly  useful,  with  an  immediate  certain  utility.  As 
to  that,  is  not  this  the  complete  statement  of  the  social  prob 
lem  :  to  improve  the  rich  man  as  a  rich  man,  the  noble  as  a 
noble,  the  commoner  as  a  commoner,  the  workingman  as  a 
workingman? 

This  spirit  of  Christian  realism  and  patient  progress  con 
tinued  to  inspire  the  larger  unions,  which,  after  1825,  bound 
together  the  men  of  the  same  trade  in  different  cities,  or  the 
men  of  different  trades  in  the  same  city.  In  1833,  Ely  Morse, 
the  president  of  the  general  trades-unions  of  the  city  of  New 
York,  in  a  remarkable  address,  which  was  the  first  utterance 
of  American  socialism,  spoke  only  of  "elevating  the  intellect 
ual  and  moral  condition  of  the  workers,  diminishing  the  line 
of  demarcation  between  workman  and  employer,  and  better 
administering  the  pecuniary  interests  of  the  poor." 

Still  this  general  trades-union  society  already  foresaw  the 


220  OUTRE-MER 

danger  of  violent  means,  for  one  of  the  articles  of  the  agree 
ment  forbade  that  "any  trade  section  should  enter  upon  a 
strike  for  higher  wages  until  the  motives  of  such  strike  have 
been  investigated  by  the  central  council."  Such,  indeed,  was 
the  nationalism  of  American  workmen  at  that  period,  that 
one  of  their  chiefs,  Stephen  Simpson  of  Philadelphia,  in  a 
manual  which  at  once  became  very  popular,  condemned  with 
a  thoroughly  puritan  indignation  European  ideas  and  litera 
ture  as  the  source  of  all  the  errors  of  the  United  States.  An 
other  prominent  labor  leader  in  the  same  way  announced  the 
necessity  of  "checking  foreign  encroachments,  and  hindering 
their  pernicious  influence  upon  the  moral  and  political  health 
of  the  country." 

In  fact,  the  associations,  which  rapidly  increased  until  1860, 
were  almost  all  thoroughly,  zealously  patriotic.  They  were 
such  not  only  in  their  names  but  in  their  claims,  which  never 
looked  to  be  anything  like  an  overturning  of  existing  condi 
tions.  A  more  humane  limitation  of  the  hours  of  labor,  a 
more  generous  distribution  of  aid,  greater  facilities  for  edu 
cation,  a  more  equitable  scale  of  wages, —  ideas  as  moderate 
and  reasonable  as  these  continually  appear  in  their  constitu 
tions. 

To  realize  these,  the  workmen  always  relied  upon  the  most 
practical  means  and  those  most  in  conformity  with  the  true 
Anglo-Saxon  spirit  of  free  action  and  liberty;  they  asked  for 
individual  subscriptions,  they  advocated  clever  electoral 
methods,  they  founded  newspapers,  they  studied  technical 
questions.  Thus  the  American  hatters'  association,  founded 
in  1854,  is  chiefly  interested  in  the  question  of  apprenticeship. 
It  undertook  to  limit  their  number,  in  order  at  the  same  time 
to  limit  the  number  of  workmen  among  whom  work  must  be 
divided. 

Following  the  various  lines  of  their  effort  and  their  propa 
ganda,  one  feels  inspired  with  profound  respect  for  so  much 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  221 

conscience  in  the  search  for  the  better,  for  so  manly  an  accep 
tation  of  their  lot,  for  such  constant  and  clear-sighted  energy. 
One  sees  how  much  the  Yankee  of  good  stock  was  worth,  is 
still  worth, —  he  upon  whom  the  strong  tradition  of  the  early 
New  England  colonists  is  imprinted;  and  one  becomes  clearly 
aware  of  the  sudden  astounding  deviation  of  this  movement 
by  the  second  current,  that  which  has  made  possible  such 
speeches  as  those  of  Mr.  Debs  at  Chicago,  denouncing  one  of 
the  great  companies  of  the  country,  as  a  barbarian  chief  might 
denounce  a  city  to  be  sacked:  "We  will  side-track  Pullman 
and  his  cars  together,"  and  accusing  the  government  of  military 
despotism  for  a  mere  calling  out  of  the  police ! 

Immediately  after  the  War  of  Secession  foreign  influence 
began  to  make  itself  felt,  and  at  the  same  time  immigration 
began  to  increase  from  year  to  year.  Even  during  the  war,  all 
Americans  by  birth  or  affection  being  in  the  army,  foreign  labor 
began  to  replace  native  labor.  This  substitution  went  on  during 
the  period  that  followed,  which  was  marked  by  an  enormous 
revival  of  industry.  More  and  more  hands  were  needed,  and, 
as  the  means  of  transportation  were  becoming  more  and  more 
easy,  immigrants  came  in  flocks.  The  Atlantic  became  the  great 
conduit  through  which  flowed  all  the  malcontents  of  old  Europe, 
especially  of  Germany. 

The  latter  country,  the  true  fatherland  of  revolutionary  social 
ism,  had  already,  after  1848,  sent  to  America  the  first  agitators 
who  had  sowed  upon  this  soil  of  realistic  individualism  the  seeds 
of  an  absurd  overturning  and  a  bloody  Utopia.  They  were  not 
destined  to  germinate  until  twenty  years  later.  A  tailor  of 
Magdeburg,  Wilhelm  Weiteling,  imprisoned  in  his  own  country 
for  carrying  on  a  revolutionary  propaganda,  came  to  New  York. 
Aided  by  Henry  Koch,  another  German,  he  immediately 
founded  a  German  revolutionary  society,  the  Arbeiterbund. 
A  third  German,  Weidemeyer,  a  friend  of  Karl  Marx,  was  not 
long  in  joining  them.  These  three  men  may  be  considered  as 


222  OUTRE-MER 

very  remarkable  specimens  of  a  type  now  common  in  the 
United  States,  the  cosmopolitan  agitator,  who  imports  into  a 
country  of  which  he  knows  nothing  revolutionary  theories 
which  he  has  constructed  with  reference  to  the  abuses  of 
another. 

Both  the  convictions  and  the  characters  of  all  three  were 
entirely  matured  when  they  arrived.  Weiteling  was  forty  years 
old,  Henry  Koch  thirty-two.  Weidemeyer  had  passed  his  whole 
youth  in  conspiring  in  his  native  land.  None  of  their  ideas 
were  American,  and  none  of  the  manifestations  which  they 
stirred  up,  without  immediate  result  however,  were  American. 
Thus  it  was  that  a  club  of  communists  being  founded  in  New 
York,  under  their  direction,  in  1857,  they  decided  to  celebrate 
the  next  year  —  what  anniversary?  That  of  the  insurrection 
of  June  in  Paris  !  Several  thousand  men  and  women  took 
part  in  it;  they  belonged  to  all  countries  except  America. 

This  society,  this  festival,  and  this  club  were  the  prologue 
of  the  great  drama  of  internationalism  which  is  being  played 
to-day  from  Boston  to  San  Francisco.  The  very  word  inter 
national  had  hardly  been  pronounced  then.  Now,  and  espe 
cially  since  in  1872  the  grand  council  of  the  International 
Association  of  Workingmen  was  transferred  to  New  York,  it 
may  be  found  in  hundreds  of  programmes  and  in  thousands  of 
articles  published  by  newspapers  which  are  printed  in  several 
languages. 

Even  when  the  word  is  not  there,  the  international  spirit  may 
be  recognized  by  the  essential  alteration  of  the  principles  on 
which  the  truly  American  societies  rested.  In  the  first  place, 
there  are  no  longer  any  religious  declarations.  Whether  the 
leagues  bear  the  name  Socialistic  Labor  Party,  or  International 
Workingmen's  Associations,  whether  they  are  called  Inter 
national  Working  People's  Association,  or  Central  Labor  Union, 
the  S.  L.  P.,  like  the  I.  W.  A.,  or  the  I.  W.  P.  A.,  and  the 
C.  L.  U.,  are  all  alike  in  the  absence  of  Christian  ideas.  In 


THE  LOWER   ORDERS  223 

the  chief,  the  arrogance  of  materialism  has  taken  the  place  of 
the  half-mystical  solemnity  of  the  workingmen  still  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  the  "  Pilgrim  Fathers."  "  The  Church,"  they 
say  roughly,  "  seeks  ultimately  to  make  complete  idiots  of  the 
mass,  and  to  make  them  forego  an  earthly  paradise  by  promis 
ing  a  fictitious  heaven." 

With  Christianity,  humility  of  heart  has  taken  its  leave,  and 
with  it,  the  noble  submission  to  the  fundamental  laws  of  human 
life,  formulated  once  for  all  in  the  Decalogue.  No  doubt, 
certain  orators  still  repudiate  violence  in  the  means,  though 
holding  up  revolution  as  aim.  It  is  enough,  however,  to  look 
at  their  practice  to  understand  that  the  foundation  of  every 
man's  thought  conforms  to  the  terrible  expression  of  the  Pitts- 
burg  manifesto,  "  Destruction  of  the  existing  class  law,  by  all 
means :  that  is,  by  energetic,  relentless,  revolutionary,  and 
international  action." 

From  this  point  there  is  to  be  no  more  slow  and  wise  solu 
tions,  no  more  of  that  intelligent  and  purposed  positivism  which 
is  the  very  essence  of  the  American  soul.  From  any  traditional 
point  of  view  we  have  had  the  last  of  these  calls  to  the  grand 
War  of  Independence  which  brought  together  both  poor  and 
rich  in  a  common  pride  of  belonging  to  the  freest  of  peoples. 
The  spoiled  children  of  the  party  expressed  the  sentiment 
which  the  others  scarcely  concealed,  when,  unfurling  the  black 
flag  at  Chicago  in  1884,  they  cried  :  — 

"  This  is  the  first  time  that  this  emblem  of  hunger  and 
despair  has  appeared  upon  American  ground.  It  proves 
that  this  people  has  come  to  the  same  conditions  as  other 
peoples." 

The  Freiheit,  one  of  their  organs,  put  into  brusque  words 
what  the  Internationalists  think  of  America  :  "  Judge  Lynch  is 
still  the  best  and  least  costly  tribunal  in  this  country." 

In  all  these  tendencies  you  recognize  the  obscene  and  vio 
lent  socialism  of  Germany,  from  which  issued  Russian  nihilism 


224  OUTRE-MER 

and  French  anarchism.  This  it  is  that  three  million  Germans 
have  brought  with  them  within  thirty  years ;  this  is  the  spirit 
that  effervesces  in  monstrous  strikes  like  that  of  Chicago.  This 
is  what  flowed  like  a  destroying  metal  into  the  moulds  of  the 
associations  so  solidly  and  practically  formed  by  the  first  Trade- 
Unionists.  Thanks  to  German  socialism,  these  associations 
are  bloated  and  deformed.  Veritable  armies,  whose  soldiers 
do  not  know  one  another,  have  been  organized  under  the  pre 
text  of  labor  federations.  The  generals  who  manoeuvre  them 
are  foreigners  or  the  sons  of  foreigners,  perfectly  indifferent  to 
the  happy  future  of  the  country  whose  hospitality  they  have 
received.  Even  societies  like  the  Knights  of  Labor,  which 
keep  the  grand  tradition  of  Christian  idealism,  have  been  urged 
by  their  new  chiefs  in  the  direction  of  international  revolu 
tion,  and  Mr.  Debs  could  exclaim  a  few  months  ago,  with  a 
pride  which  was  at  least  American  in  its  conception  of  the 
" record  "  :  — 

"  We  are  going  to  have  the  greatest  railroad  strike  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen." 

This  perverse  ranter  had  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand 
men  behind  him. 

Sometimes  it  happens  that  a  newspaper  artist  sums  up 
in  the  happy  hit  of  a  caricature  a  whole  political  or  social 
situation.  Thus  a  picture  in  Fun,  toward  the  end  of  the 
Chicago  strike,  brought  together  in  three  figures  and  a  legend 
the  entire  significance  of  the  strike  and  all  its  lessons.  The 
traditional  Jonathan  is  standing  beside  a  rocking-chair,  his 
hand  in  his  pockets,  a  dead  cigar  in  the  corner  of  his  beard 
less  mouth.  He  has  even  forgotten  to  finish  his  glass  of  whis 
key  and  soda  which  he  has  set  down  upon  the  counter.  His 
thin  melancholy  face  with  its  high  cheek  bones,  lengthened  by 
the  legendary  goatee,  is  profoundly  meditative.  On  his  waist 
coat  are  the  thirteen  stars  representing  the  thirteen  original 
States,  which  are  also  seen  on  his  silver  coins.  Facing  him, 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  225 

a  colossal  policeman  has  by  the  collar  a  personage  who  might 
be  a  Russian  peasant  or  a  Bavarian  workman,  in  a  flannel 
shirt,  trowsers  tucked  into  his  boots,  and  a  soft  felt  hat :  "  I 
was  obliged  to  arrest  you,  Debs.  It  was  not  a  strike ;  it  was  a 
revolution." 

Jonathan  utters  this  remark  with  the  serious  phlegm  of  one 
who  understands  and  wills.  What  does  he  understand  but  that 
the  newcomers  are  about  to  carry  on  in  his  country  a  work 
irreparably  hostile  to  all  his  ideas,  his  conscience,  and  his  past. 
What  he  wills,  is  to  hinder  at  all  costs,  were  he  to  die  in  the 
attempt,  such  a  disintegration  of  his  country.  The  formida 
ble  movement  at  Chicago  may  have  been  so  far  good.  The 
problem  had  been  stated  with  such  tragic  clearness  that  it  was 
necessary  indeed  to  affront  it ;  and  it  is  to  the  honor  of  Mr. 
Cleveland  that  he  acted  with  regard  to  this  Western  affair,  in 
proportion  to  its  importance,  as  Mr.  Lincoln  firmly  acted  with 
the  South. 

This  first  episode  is  probably  only  a  prologue.  Looking 
upon  the  map  of  the  United  States,  and  reflecting  that  between 
Chicago  and  the  Pacific  all  the  cities  of  this  immense  country 
are  peopled  with  these  newcomers,  one  sees  the  menacing 
possibility  of  a  scission  between  the  two  parts  of  the  vast  con 
tinent  which  will  have  nothing  in  common,  neither  memories 
nor  ideas,  nor  aspirations,  nor  even  a  language.  Again  the 
image  of  Lincoln  arises,  with  face  like  that  of  Jonathan  in  the 
caricature,  and  you  think  that  if  he  were  to  return  to  that 
Chicago  whence  he  went  forth,  and  which  has  become  so 
terribly  Germanized  since  his  death,  he  also  would  utter  the 
word  of  conflict :  — 

"  Obliged  to  arrest  you." 

Just  as  the  question  of  slavery  was  only  a  battle-field  for  the 

clashing  of  two  contradictory  civilizations,  of  the  South  and 

of  the  North,  it  sometimes  appears  as  if,  at  the  present  time, 

the  East  and  the  West  were  also  about  to  seek  a  field  in  which 

Q 


226  OUTRE-MER 

to  measure  their  strength,  or,  rather,  the  America  of  Americans 
and  the  America  of  foreigners.  The  Silver  Bill  was  one  of 
these  fields.  The  Chicago  strike  was  another.  The  social 
question  is  a  permanent  one,  upon  which,  perhaps,  the  deci 
sive  battle  will  be  fought.  The  grand  formulae  of  social  re 
forms  have  no  more  meaning  nor  any  more  sincere  adherents 
in  the  United  States  than  in  France.  The  infinite  complexity 
of  a  civilization  is  not  modified  at  the  bidding  of  even  the 
most  justified  of  our  revolts,  or  the  most  intelligent  of  our 
theories.  Except  a  few  insane  people,  everybody  in  his  inner 
heart  admits  this  too  evident  truth,  though  almost  every  one 
says  the  contrary. 

Under  these  problems,  which  every  one  knows  are  insoluble, 
throb  other  forces,  real  and  not  to  be  resolved.  The  day  when 
excessive  immigration  shall  have  truly  created  two  Americas 
in  America,  the  conflict  between  these  two  worlds  will  be  as 
inevitable  as  that  between  England  and  Ireland,  between  Ger 
many  and  France,  between  China  and  Japan.  Not  against  his 
employer  will  the  American  workman  of  New  York  and  Phila 
delphia  be  led  to  make  war,  his  employer  and  he  will  end  by 
acting  together  against  the  foreign  workman. 

To  sum  up,  in  this  vast  democracy  a  very  peculiar  form  of 
civilization  has  been  elaborated,  Anglo-Saxon  in  its  origin. 
Another  is  in  process  of  elaboration,  through  cosmopolitan 
associations,  with  nothing  in  common  with  the  former.  If  the 
second  form  comes,  by  way  of  too  widespread  strikes  and  too 
violent  illegalities,  to  a  weakness  of  the  whole  national  life, 
a  civil  war  will  break  out. 

Pessimists  insist  that  such  war  is  very  near.  Optimists 
point  out  that  immigration,  on  the  one  hand,  appears  to  have 
diminished;  on  the  other,  that  assimilation,  though  become 
more  slow  and  very  difficult,  yet  goes  on  in  an  irresistible 
way,  and  that  foreigners  are  becoming  fewer  and  a  little 
more  Americanized  every  year,  almost  every  day,  They  dem- 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  227 

onstrate  that  Christianity  continues  to  dispute  possession 
of  the  revolutionary  masses  with  materialism,  and  that  the 
Protestant  pastors  rival  our  Catholic  bishops  in  zeal  when 
it  comes  to  the  people.  Was  it  not  a  Reform  minister  who 
uttered  this  fine  exclamation,  which  was  at  first  attributed  to 
the  generous  heart  of  Monsignor  Ireland :  — 

"Theologians  say  that  the  problem  is  to  bring  the  masses 
into  the  Church.  As  for  me,  I  affirm  that  the  problem  is  to 
bring  the  Church  to  the  masses.  The  Church  is  the  leaven. 
The  masses  are  the  dough  which  it  will  leaven." 

Optimists  add  that  in  America  all  the  capitalists  are  still 
men  thoroughly  penetrated  with  the  primitive  energy,  and 
that,  in  case  of  need,  they  will  know  how  to  defend  their  own 
interest,  with  a  personal  vigor  very  different  from  the  spiritual 
weakness  of  the  nobles  of  1789  or  the  indolent  cowardice  of 
the  small  European  landowners  in  1894.  As  to  the  psychol 
ogy  which  perceives  in  American  society  an  experience  with 
out  analogue,  the  years  to  come  will  be  more  interesting  here 
than  anywhere  else,  because,  after  having  established  the  truth 
of  all  the  novelties  of  this  New  World,  we  remain  astonished 
on  perceiving  that  fundamentally  it  is  going,  under  particular 
forms,  through  the  same  crises  as  the  ancient  world  endured. 
If  the  social  problem  in  the  United  States  was  only  a  question 
of  nationalities,  is  the  political  problem  of  Europe,  armed  to 
the  death,  to  end  in  anything  else?  So  true  it  is  that  thoughts 
and  constitutions,  doctrines  and  systems,  are  only  appear 
ances,  under  which  are  hidden  a  number  of  facts,  always  the 
same  since  the  world  was  made,  always  real  and  indestructi 
ble,  like  duration  and  extent,  first  and  last;  conditions  of  our 
whole  being  and  activity,  our  triumphs  and  disasters.  And 
perhaps  among  the  facts  which  are  most  indestructible,  most 
real,  the  most  essential  is  that  of  Race. 


228  OUTRE-MER 

II.    Farmers  and  Cowboys 

To  estimate  more  accurately  the  revolutionary  strength  of 
international  socialism  in  the  United  States,  we  must  know 
which  side  the  immense  agricultural  population  of  the  West 
would  take,  in  case  of  a  decisive  conflict  —  the  farmers  who 
produce  the  wheat  by  which  all  America  and  all  Europe  is 
fed,  the  drovers  who  feed  the  gigantic  packing-houses  of 
Chicago  with  such  a  continual  procession  of  cattle. 

Here  the  foreign  element  is  indeed  found,  but  entirely  sur 
rounded,  diluted,  corrected  by  the  national  element.  When 
an  Eastern  man  goes  West,  it  is  seldom  with  the  intention  of 
becoming  a  workingman.  He  prefers  to  take  the  chances  of 
a  more  speedy  fortune  with  the  independence  which  inheres 
in  the  cultivation  of  such  fertile  land,  such  productive  horse 
raising,1  or  in  prospecting  for  gold.  He  becomes  farmer, 
cowboy,  or  miner.  Thus  is  explained  that  abandonment  of 
the  rural  homes  of  New  England,  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken.  But  if  it  is  difficult  to  divine  the  real  thought  of  the 
workingman,  even  when  we  know  the  plan  of  the  associations 
to  which  he  belongs,  the  newspapers  he  reads,  the  speeches 
he  makes  and  listens  to,  the  leaders  whose  influence  he  is 
under,  how  much  more  difficult  is  it  to  fathom  the  mind  of 
the  gold-digger  in  his  placer,  the  horseman  in  his  tent,  above 
all,  of  the  farmer  in  his  circumscribed  life,  his  long  medita 
tions,  and  the  almost  vegetative  darkness  of  his  own  conscious 
ness? 

We  should,  at  all  costs,  understand  this  last,  for  he  forms 
the  very  basis  of  this  immense  population.  But  by  what  proc 
esses  shall  we  attain  to  a  knowedge  of  him  ?  We  know  that 
his  lot  is  hard,  worse  than  that,  exhausting  and  murderous. 
Travellers  who  have  studied  the  laborer  of  Kansas,  Missouri, 

1  The  average  of  births,  which  is  not  more  than  50  per  cent  in  a  state 
of  civilization,  reaches  70,  80,  and  90  per  cent  in  the  prairie. 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  229 

Iowa,  in  his  log-house,  agree  in  describing  him  as  put  to  the 
severest  strain  of  all  the  much-tried  inhabitants  of  the  New 
World.  The  log-house,  the  little  house  of  ill-squared  trunks, 
is  built  in  a  corner  of  the  prairie,  his  vast  domain,  burned  by 
a  torrid  sun  in  summer  and  buried  in  snow  in  winter.  The 
principal  ornament  of  the  room  is  an  engraving  of  the  death 
of  Lincoln, —  the  last  episode  of  a  life  begun  like  this,  and 
which  went,  according  to  the  popular  play  upon  words,  "  from 
the  log-house  to  the  White  House,"  from  a  hut  like  this  to  the 
little  white  palace  in  Washington,  by  way  of  how  many  severe 
efforts,  continued  struggles,  hardships  continually  renewed ! 

The  farmer,  for  his  part,  nourishes  no  such  ambition,  not 
even  for  his  sons.  He  wants  to  live  and  to  have  his  farm  pay. 
He  wears  himself  out  in  this  struggle,  and  his  wife  dies  of  it. 
The  courageous  creature  has  long  kept  to  herself  the  palpita 
tions  that  rent  her  heart  whenever  she  climbed  to  the  garret 
in  the  coTcT  mornings,  the  cracking  of  her  joints  when  she 
lifted  any  burden,  the  shivering  fevers  of  her  sleepless  nights.1 
The  doctor  lives  several  miles  away,  and  each  visit  costs  from 
five  to  ten  dollars.  She  goes  on  trying  the  patent  medicines 
advertised  in  her  newspaper,  following  the  advice  of  the  neigh 
bors,  above  all,  hiding  her  sufferings  from  her  husband,  till 
she  drops  at  last,  and  goes  away,  leaving  him  alone  with  his 
children  on  the  little  demesne  covered  with  mortgages. 

And  yet  these  farmers,  who  labor  under  such  cruel  condi 
tions,  appear,  when  they  have  occasion  to  bring  forward  their 
private  opinions,  to  be  as  wise  and  as  respectful  of  the  rights 
of  others  as  the  strikers  of  Illinois  and  California  are  unreason 
ing  and  fierce.  The  widespread  association  by  which  they 
guard  their  common  interests,  "the  Grange,"  has  always  kept 
itself  sedulously  outside  of  political  movements.  It  assumes, 
as  its  name  indicates,  to  be  at  the  service  not  only  of  agricul- 

1  Cf.  in  Scribner's  Magazine  for  March,  1894,  a  striking  picture  of  such 
an  existence,  "The  Farmer  in  the  North." 


230  OUTRE-MER 

tural  laborers  but  of  the  entire  agricultural  class, —  "the 
Grange,  or  the  patrons  of  husbandry."  To  say  all  in  one 
word,  its  merits  are  such  that  in  the  book  by  Aveling,  already 
cited,  appear  the  following  significant  words :  — 

"  It  may  in  time  become  leavened  with  the  leaven  of  the 
general  working-class  movement,  but  as  it  is  at  present  con 
stituted  the  Grange  is  more  likely  to  be  a  hindrance  to  that 
general  movement  than  a  help." 

What  shall  we  conclude,  if  not  that  once  again  the  land 
has  done  its  moralizing  work?  It  has  given  man  the  great, 
the  unique  virtue,  in  teaching  him  to  accept  himself,  as  he 
accepts  the  order  of  the  months,  the  slow  growth  of  the  har 
vests,  the  rain,  the  snow,  the  wind,  the  sun,  all  the  apparent 
and  necessary  wrongs  of  the  seasons. 

One  characteristic  of  these  Western  farmers  may  be  dis 
cerned  at  the  first  approach;  it  is  a  thirst,  a  hunger,  almost  a 
fever  of  desire,  to  know,  an  intense,  even  violent,  passion  for 
the  things  of  the  mind,  which  explains  how  so  many  remarka 
ble  men  in  the  United  States  have  been  farmers'  sons.  This 
shade  of  character  is  so  completely  unexpected  in  these  rough 
men  that  at  first  one  does  not  believe  it  when  the  Americans 
tell  you  of  it,  some  of  them  in  complaint,  some  in  admira 
tion.  The  former  deplore  the  excessive  seriousness  of  the 
national  character,  which  ends  they  say  in  a  constant  excess 
of  work,  an  absolute  incapacity  to  enjoy  anything,  "to  enjoy 
himself,"  as  they  say.  The  others  see  in  it  the  presage  of  that 
sovereignty  in  the  civilized  world  which  is  the  secret  dream 
of  all  full-blooded  Yankees. 

Whatever  conclusion  may  be  drawn  from  it,  the  fact  re 
mains.  I  have  assured  myself  of  it,  not  once  but  twenty 
times,  thirty  times,  only  by  studying  the  crowd  which  thronged 
around  the  Exposition  buildings  in  Chicago  —  now  burned, 
because  to  take  them  down  would  have  been  too  slow  a  proc 
ess.  When  I  visited  them  they  were  in  the  splendor  of  their 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  231 

whiteness  and  their  fleeting  glory.  With  their  capitals  copied 
from  Rome  and  Athens,  their  slender  domes,  the  chaotic 
medley  of  their  composite  architecture,  they  gave  the  idea  of 
a  dream  city,  a  city  of  vision  suddenly  appearing  on  the  bor 
ders  of  Lake  Michigan  vast  as  a  sea,  whose  bright  green 
waters  dashed  against  the  columns  of  a  gigantic  portico.  Yes, 
it  was  truly  a  glorious  scene  in  the  fine  days  of  early  autumn, 
raised  up  as  by  a  wish,  for  the  pleasure  of  this  great  nation  of 
toilers,  called  together  there  as  to  a  meeting  of  joy  and  repose. 

But,  no.  The  multitude  scattered  along  these  walks  and  over 
these  lawns  was  more  than  all  striking  to  a  Parisian  by  the  total 
absence  of  both  joy  and  repose.  These  people  were  neither 
heedless  nor  lively.  They  went  about  examining  the  interior 
and  the  exterior  of  the  Exposition  with  a  sort  of  blank  avidity, 
as  if  they  were  walking  in  the  midst  of  a  colossal  lesson  in 
things. 

"  I  don't  care  about  seeing  folks.  I  kin  see  folks  to  home. 
I  came  to  see  what's  made  in  the  world."  l 

These  words,  overheard  and  reported  by  one  of  the  chroni 
clers  of  this  singular  festival,  were  mentally  uttered  by  all  the 
visitors.  They  were,  for  the  most  part,  just  these  farmers, 
come  from  the  four  quarters  of  the  immense  plain  that  stretches 
from  Montana  to  Kentucky  and  from  Arizona  to  Wisconsin. 
You  could  see  them  about  two  o'clock  sitting  on  the  ground, 
with  their  families,  around  their  State  building,  leisurely  eat 
ing  the  provision  of  cold  food  which  they  had  brought  in  a 
pasteboard  box.  The  coarse  cloth  of  their  garments,  their 
sunburnt  faces,  even  their  way  of  eating,  without  a  table,  and 
with  the  ease  of  people  accustomed  to  take  their  food  in  the 
open  air, —  everything  about  them  betrayed  the  fixed  habits 
of  rural  life.  Their  lunch  finished,  they  began  again  their 
indefinite,  indefatigable  walk,  not  of  pleasure  but  of  instruc- 

1  Scribner's  Magazine ,  March,  1894. 


232  OUTRE-MER 

tion,  application.  How  many  of  these  rustic  visitors  have  I 
followed,  as  they  went  from  the  Hall  of  Mines  to  that  of  Elec 
tricity,  or  from  the  Transportation  Building  to  the  Woman's 
Building,  attentive,  patient,  obscurely  reflective,  and,  it 
seemed  to  me,  even  less  interested  in  the  machines,  in  the 
prodigality  of  positive  and  material  invention,  than  in  the 
exhibits  that  were  more  scientific,  more  useless,  nearer  to 
the  wide  field  of  abstract  speculation. 

As  I  write  these  words,  I  see  three  of  these  personages  —  a 
father  and  his  two  sons  —  motionless  in  a  corner  of  the  an 
thropological  exhibit.  They  were  looking  at  the  colossal 
mammoth,  the  enormous  hairy  elephant  of  before  the  deluge, 
copied  from  that  of  St.  Petersburg.  All  around  them  were 
gathered  the  forms  of  animals  and  men  that  formerly  inhabited 
America, —  races  extinct  or  dying  out,  elk  and  caribous, 
bisons  and  grizzly  bears,  Sioux  and  Apaches  in  their  encamp 
ments,  cliff-dwellers,  those  Troglodytes  of  the  Grand  Canon 
of  the  Colorado. 

The  farmer  and  his  two  sons  took  no  notice  of  these  things, 
absorbed  as  they  were  by  the  colossus,  the  history  of  which 
one  of  the  sons  was  telling  to  his  father.  The  latter  listened 
to  the  seventeen-year-old  boy  without  taking  his  eyes  from  the 
formidable  beast,  the  silent  giant,  with  his  long  recurved 
tusks.  Did  he  feel  the  beauty  of  this  ancient  king  of  crea 
tion,  so  tall,  so  slight,  so  simple,  nature's  first  success,  very 
evidently  superior  to  the  shapeless  masses  of  the  monsters,  his 
contemporaries,  the  plesiosaurus,  the  ichthyosaurus,  the  mega- 
therion?  What  was  this  witness  of  distant  ages,  this  traveller 
in  the  forests  of  giant  ferns,  saying  to  the  thoughtful  colonist? 
The  boy  ceased  to  speak ;  the  three  men  stood  there  without 
exchanging  a  word.  The  grave  countenance  of  the  ignorant 
father,  the  almost  equally  grave  faces  of  the  two  better  in 
formed  boys,  were  bent  forward  with  an  expression  of  insa 
tiable  curiosity.  Did  they,  in  their  rudimentary  condition, 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  233 

feel  that  amazement,  in  view  of  the  enigma  of  the  world, 
which  is  not  so  foreign  to  primitive  minds  as  we  in  our  pride 
imagine,  since  it  is  these  minds  that  have  created  the  myths, 
the  poetry  of  legend,  and,  to  say  all  in  one  word,  the  re 
ligions? 

Did  they  ask  themselves  the  reason  of  the  rhythm  of  crea 
tion  and  destruction,  which  will  carry  us  away  in  our  turn, 
after  having  carried  away  innumerable  species?  Why  that 
world  before  our  own,  the  attempts  and  new  attempts  of 
Nature,  trying  her  powers,  like  a  never-satisfied  artist,  in  these 
new  beginnings,  in  which  the  indefinite  power  to  produce  for 
ever  alternates  with  the  impossibility  of  preserving?  Is  man 
himself  the  limit  of  this  evolution?  His  roots  are  so  deeply 
fixed  in  it,  he  is  so  distinct  from  it  by  the  higher  parts  of  his 
being!  Thoughts,  words,  moral  problems,  what  an  abyss 
divides  these  things  from  those !  What  a  miracle  is  the  mere 
astonishment  of  the  thought  in  face  of  the  miracle  of  destiny? 
How  new  a  thing,  in  this  universe  oL  blind  instincts  and  un 
conscious  needs !  This  gigantic  elephant,  but  now  the  dispos 
sessed  sovereign  of  our  planet,  did  he  ever  look  at  another 
creature  with  the  thoughtful  gaze  with  which  this  farmer  and 
his  sons  have  enfolded  him? 

They  begin  at  last  to  talk,  without  taking  their  eyes  from  the 
admired  animal,  and  I  could  hear  in  passing  that  they  were 
speaking  of  the  Bible,  pronouncing  the  name  of  Noah.  Then 
the  squatter  of  to-day,  like  the  men  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  in 
burying  himself  in  the  prairie,  carries  with  him  the  old  book,  so 
dear  to  the  Puritans,  to  be  the  companion  of  his  solitude,  his 
work,  and  his  thought. 

It  was  written  that  I  should  see  again  the  serious  faces  of  the 
father  and  his  two  sons,  and  that  the  same  day  I  should  collect 
some  very  unexpected  and  still  more  significant  information  about 
Western  life.  These  vast  fairs,  which  go  by  the  pompous  titles 


234  OUTRE-MER 

of  Universal  Exhibitions,  have  at  least  this  advantage,  that  they 
bring  about  meetings  elsewhere  impossible,  yet  natural  in  this 
Babel  of  people  from  all  parts.  I  shall,  therefore,  simply  nar 
rate  both  of  these  meetings,  which,* I  may  add,  were  purely 
accidental.  I  do  this  with  all  the  more  pleasure,  because  it 
gives  me  the  opportunity  to  sketch,  as  if  on  the  margin  of  this 
travelling-journal,  a  rough  draught  of  the  most  singular  spectacle 
which  I  have  seen  in  America ;  a  session  of  the  Parliament  of 
Religions,  where  I  again  met  my  three  friends. 

This  Parliament  was  held  in  one  of  the  halls  of  the  Art  Insti 
tute  which  stands,  as  it  is  quite  in  keeping  that  the  Chicago 
Museum  should  do,  close  by  a  railway  station  and  a  steamboat 
landing.  I  went  there  one  morning,  deeply  moved  with  the 
expectation  of  a  profound,  religious  impression.  I  received  my 
impression  indeed,  but  entirely  through  the  public :  the  multi 
tude  of  humble  folk,  evidently  working  people,  who  crowded 
the  benches  and  chairs  of  the  vast  semicircle.  With  what 
touching  attention  they  listened,  ready  to  receive  the  good  word 
—  any  good  word.  And  with  what  surprise  I  recognized,  seated 
about  ten  chairs  from  me,  the  three  persons  who  had  so  much 
interested  me  by  their  way  of  contemplating  the  antediluvian 
monster  !  I  felt  a  certain  vanity  of  the  astute  observer,  in  per 
ceiving  that  I  had  not  erred  in  attributing  to  these  people  a 
regard  for  religious  things.  Their  rugged  faces  wore  the  same 
absorbed  expression  as  before.  Out  of  doors  locomotive  bells 
were  tinkling,  trains  puffing,  steamboats  whistling.  Not  one  of 
the  fifteen  hundred  auditors  gathered  in  this  hall  remarked  the 
strangeness  of  such  noises  at  the  door  of  this  palace,  just  as  no 
one  appeared  to  observe  the  astounding  contrast  which  existed 
between  the  true,  simple,  devout  fervor  of  the  audience,  and  the 
sort  of  sacred  parade  that  was  going  on  upon  the  platform  in 
the  rear,  opposite  a  gigantic  photographic  apparatus  set  up  in 
the  opposite  side  of  the  hall. 

In  fact,  in  spite  of  my  good  will,  the  feeling  that  it  was  all  a 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  235 

parade  forced  itself  upon  me  whenever  I  turned  my  eyes  from 
the  crowd  to  the  speakers'  stage.  There  were  thirty  persons 
sitting  there  that  morning,  —  one  of  the  last  of  the  session : 
first  a  Japanese  in  a  coat  of  embossed  silk,  a  dog-like  face  with 
a  pair  of  glasses  across  the  flat  nose  and  black  moustaches 
against  a  shining  yellow  skin.  He  was  busily  cutting  the  pages 
of  a  pamphlet,  without  listening  to  what  was  going  on,  while 
at  his  side  an  Indian  robed  in  white,  with  very  gentle,  very 
brown  eyes  in  a  face  so  swarthy  that  it  looked  burned,  was 
vaguely  smiling  in  the  visions  of  a  half-sleep.  A  Chinese  in  a 
blue  robe,  his  body  encased  in  a  violet  silk  vest,  and  a  black 
cap  with  a  red  button  on  his  head,  was  scanning  the  audience ; 
his  wizened  little  face  was  pale  and  thin,  with  a  not  too  straight 
nose.  A  Greek  archbishop  sat  superb,  with  squared  shoulders, 
his  long  brown  beard  spread  out  over  his  gray  almost  yellowish 
robe.  Over  it  a  black  toga  was  draped,  and  the  gold  of  the 
chain  from  which  hung  his  cross  gleamed  between  the  two  stuffs. 
He  held  a  long,  silver-headed  cane  in  his  hand,  and  his  inexpres 
sive  eyes  shone  with  the  brightness  of  a  magician,  set  as  they 
were  in  a  large  face  of  a  thick  warm  pallor  and  surmounted  by 
the  high  cap  of  a  professor. 

One  of  his  priests  sat  beside  him,  a  pappas,  with  long,  ill- 
kept  hair,  untrimmed  beard,  and  delicate,  sensual,  ironical  face. 
Then  came  another  Indian,  twenty  years  old,  perhaps,  self- 
sufficient  in  his  ardent  youth ;  his  dress  intensely  red,  and  his 
turban  intensely  yellow.  Around  these  Orientals  were  grouped 
English  pastors,  rosy  and  shaven ;  German  professors,  heavy- 
bearded  and  sharp-eyed  under  their  spectacles.  A  Frenchman 
of  delicate  profile,  but  thin  and  worn,  sat  cross-legged,  show 
ing  feet  elegantly  shod  in  patent  leather,  with  white  jean  gaiters. 
A  little  in  the  background  were  two  women  :  one,  gray-haired 
and  fifty,  with  the  abstracted  and  modest  air  of  a  poor  school 
teacher ;  the  other,  young  and  beautiful,  very  dark,  with  cheeks 
brown  under  their  paint,  her  shoulders  covered  by  a  silk  shawl 


236  OUTRE-MER 

of  mingled  brilliant  colors.  Large  gold  circlets  jingled  on  her 
wrists.  And  to  make  this  composite  exhibition  as  vulgar  as  it 
was  foreign,  a  fat,  uncleanly  man  of  forty-five,  in  the  front  row, 
was  fumbling  at  his  nose  with  his  fingers  ;  while  a  chairman,  with 
the  voice  of  a  showman,  rose  between  two  organ  measures,  to 
introduce  the  speakers,  with  all  the  graces  of  an  impresario. 

I  was  wrong  in  looking  thus  minutely  into  the  accidents  of 
this  realization  of  a  great  idea,  and  my  Western  farmers  were 
right,  like  the  other  auditors,  in  seeing  that  idea  beyond  and 
through  these  accidents.  There  was  a  moment  when  the  three 
heads  were  bent  forward  with  more  profound  attention.  A 
speaker  had  risen,  a  celebrated  minister  of  the  Anglican  Church. 
He  was  a  small  man  of  about  fifty,  very  thin  and  ruddy.  The 
black  of  his  straight-cut  coat  and  the  white  of  his  all-round 
collar,  without  cravat,  made  his  red  face  seem  redder.  He 
began  in  a  low  voice,  hardly  audible.  With  a  monotonous, 
almost  automatic,  gesture,  he  indefatigably  raised  and  lowered 
his  arm.  By  degrees,  as  he  spoke,  he  warmed  up,  his  body 
straightened  out,  his  foot  beat  the  floor,  his  color  grew  more 
purple,  his  voice  deepened.  For  me,  too,  the  absurdities  of 
the  platform  vanished.  Here  was  that  frenzy  of  religious 
eloquence  and  passion  which  made  Protestantism  and  its  innu 
merable  sects.  When  the  words  "Church  of  England"  oc 
curred  in  his  discourse,  the  orator's  whole  being  trembled 
with  profound  inspiration.  You  could  hear  it,  could  see  it 
thrill  to  the  tips  of  his  toes,  as  he  raised  himself  upon  them 
in  his  earnestness. 

"  No !  "  he  once  exclaimed;  "  it  was  not  the  English  people 
who  made  the  Church,  it  was  the  Church  of  England  that 
made  the  English  nation !  " 

These  words,  uttered  with  furious  emphasis,  no  doubt  met 
in  his  hearers  a  previously  formed  idea,  a  conviction  that 
national  life  must  find  its  strength  in  religious  life,  for  it 
evoked  a  tempest  of  applause,  I  turned  toward  the  father  and 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  237 

his  two  sons;  they  were  clapping  their  hands,  enormous  hands, 
that  two  hundred  years  ago  would  no  doubt  have  applauded 
the  Lord  Protector,  and  thirty  years  ago  Lincoln,  when  he 
uttered  to  the  people  the  strange  words  announcing  that  the 
war  would  last 

"Until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  by  the  lash  shall  be  paid 
for  by  another  drawn  by  the  sword." 

These  men,  with  their  intense  faces,  have  without  doubt 
drawn  their  tragic  vision  of  divine  justice  directly  from  the 
Bible.  It  alone  explains  their  almost  anxiously  serious  re 
sponse  the  other  day  to  the  reminder  of  the  deluge,  and  to 
day  to  the  representatives  of  their  faith.  If  there  are  many 
like  them,  the  socialistic  atheists  may  conquer  the  villages, 
but  they  will  never  get  any  hold  upon  the  fields  of  the  West. 

My  curiosity  with  regard  to  these  three  men  was  so  lively 
that  I  believe  I  should  have  followed  and  tried  to  speak  with 
them  if  I  had  not  myself  been  seized  by  the  arm  at  the  moment 
the  audience  rose  at  the  sound  of 'the  organ.  I  turned,  and 
found  myself  face  to  face  with  a  celebrated  Parisian  physician, 
whom,  if  his  name  had  been  spoken,  I  should  have  fancied 
anywhere  rather  than  at  Chicago, —  in  his  magnificent  apart 
ment  in  the  Boulevard  Haussman,  in  the  clinic  of  the  Lari- 
boisiere  hospital,  in  his  laboratory  at  the  medical  school.  He 
had  made  the  most  of  an  official  pretext  of  a  hygienic  congress 
to  cross  the  Atlantic  and  see  American  civilization  with  his 
own  eyes,  object,  as  it  had  been,  of  so  many  capricious  judg 
ments.  In  two  words  he  had  explained  his  journey  to  me, 
and  presented  to  me  a  great  fellow  of  perhaps  thirty-five,  also 
a  Frenchman,  who  accompanied  him,  and  whom  by  his  thin, 
clean-shaven  face,  his  somewhat  stiff  attire,  and  the  decision 
of  his  glance,  I  took  for  a  civil  officer. 

I  had  not  taken  five  hundred  steps  with  my  two  compatriots 
before  I  found  myself  interested  in  this  young  man  to  such 
an  extent  that  I  no  longer  regretted  the  mischance  which  had 


238  OUTRE-MER 

made  me  lose  sight  of  my  friends  of  the  anthropological  ex 
hibit  and  the  Parliament  of  Religions.  I  learned  from  the 
doctor  that  the  man  before  me  was  one  of  the  most  daring 
adventurers  of  the  West,  such  as  for  several  weeks  I  have  much 
desired  to  see.  M.  Barrin-Conde"  —  I  will  designate  him  by 
this  name  —  had  in  fact  left  France  fourteen  years  before,  to 
start  a  ranch  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  had  lived  there 
eight  consecutive  years.  The  accident  of  a  short  excursion 
having  led  him  to  Toronto,  Canada,  in  the  course  of  his 
exile,  he  there  met  a  young  girl  with  whom  he  fell  in  love. 
To  marry  her  he  had  changed  his  mode  of  life,  sold  out  his 
ranch  in  North  Dakota,  and  taken  root  in  the  city  of  his 
fiancee,  now  his  wife.  He  had  founded  a  steamboat  company, 
which  he  administered  with  the  same  superior  good  sense  and 
energy  as  formerly  his  ranch;  it  had  now  monopolized  the 
major  part  of  the  traffic  of  the  great  lake. 

It  is  rare,  indeed,  and  most  pleasant,  to  meet  in  a  foreign 
land  a  Frenchman  in  whom  survives  a  spirit  of  enterprise 
equal  to  that  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  one  so  loves  to  convince 
oneself  by  his  presence  that  our  race  has  kept  the  same  qual 
ities  of  enterprise  that  once  made  it  the  great  conquering 
power;  to  talk  over  the  country  with  a  man  who  himself  has 
seen  its  lower  side  is  deeply  interesting !  In  short,  I  did  not 
leave  the  doctor  and  his  companion  the  whole  day  long.  I 
was  never  weary  of  asking  the  latter  about  his  life  at  Lance- 
Head,  —  so  his  breeding-farm  was  called,  from  the  sign  with 
which  his  horses  were  marked,  —  about  the  folk  among  whom 
he  lived,  their  manners,  their  ideas,  and  about  his  own  ideas. 
He  answered  me  quietly,  simply,  with  that  accuracy  of  speech 
that  belongs  to  the  man  of  action.  There  was  in  him  some 
thing  of  the  wild  dignity  that  Cooper  gave  his  "  Leatherstock- 
ing."  But  it  was  a  Leatherstocking  who  had  kept  up  with  our 
literature,  having  been  careful,  through  all  his  rough  life,  not 
to  fall  behind  in  intelligence. 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  239 

I  remember  that  we  finished  this  day  —  which  on  my  part 
had  been  one  long  interrogation,  and  on  his  a  long  response  — 
by  an  hour  in  an  orchestra  chair  of  one  of  the  great  Chicago 
theatres.  As  if  to  make  the  occupations  of  this  evening  a 
perfect  contrast  to  those  of  the  morning,  chance  would  have 
it  that  we  saw  Tartufe  given  by  Coquelin  and  his  troupe.  I 
had  been  proud  of  my  country  while  talking  with  M.  Barrin- 
Conde",  and  I  was  again  proud  on  seeing  this  admirable  piece 
played  as  it  was,  even  before  a  half-filled  hall.  And  what 
spectators!  Almost  all  followed  the  copy  in  a  translation, 
and  we  could  hear  the  leaves  of  the  pamphlet  all  turned  over 
at  one  time.  But  what  mattered  that  to  Coquelin !  The  great 
artist  seemed  not  even  to  know  that  there  was  a  public.  He 
evidently  played  for  himself,  with  the  conscientiousness  and 
the  care  for  his  art  which  he  would  have  displayed  on  the 
stage  of  the  Rue  de  Richelieu  at  his  first  performance.  He 
was  still  studying  it,  still  studying  himself,  ever  applying  him 
self  to  reveal  more  clearly  the  moral  anatomy  of  his  character. 
And  in  Chicago,  where  all  extravagances,  all  improvisations 
prevail,  Tartufe  appeared  finer  than  ever  by  its  strong  and 
true  simplicity,  by  the  genius  for  moderation  and  delicacy, 
which  always  kept  itself  at  the  level  of  a  man,  if  one  may 
say  so,  neither  above  nor  below,  neither  on  this  side  nor 
on  that.  There  is  something  of  Philippe  de  Champaigne 
in  Moliere,  something  of  the  vigorous  but  sober,  ardent  but 
judicious  painter  in  whose  portraits  you  ever  find  something 
to  admire  more  deeply,  and  which  never  leave  you  anything 
to  take  back  on  reflection.  Although  the  doctor  and  I 
had  seen  this  piece  thirty  times,  and  had  seen  Coquelin  in 
this  part  at  least  ten  times,  we  were  as  much  taken  by  the 
dialogue  and  the  play  as  at  the  first  time.  As  for  the  former 
"cowboy"  of  Lance-Head,  as  he  called  himself,  he  entirely 
ceased  to  speak  during  the  whole  play,  between  the  acts  in 
cluded. 


240  OUTRE-MER 

"You  do  not  know,"  he  said,  as  we  went  out  and  walked 
along  toward  Michigan  Avenue,  "no,  you  do  not 'know  how 
much,  how  painfully,  those  who  live  as  I  have  lived  feel  the 
want  of  the  intellectual  stimulus  of  the  theatre,  and  how  we 
value  an  evening  like  this.  See  here,"  he  added,  turning  to 
me,  "you  were  laughingly  asking  me,  after  dinner  this  even 
ing,  if  I  had  not  some  time  raided  a  train  in  the  West,  and 
I  did  not  answer  you.  The  fact  is,  my  friends  and  I  did  at 
tempt  nothing  less  one  day,  or,  rather,  one  night,  than  to  carry 
off  from  one  of  the  great  transcontinental  express  trains  — 
guess  whom?  Sarah  Bernhardt  herself!  She  never  knew 
anything  about  it,  however." 

"And  how  many  may  you  have  been  for  such  an  expedi 
tion?  "  I  asked. 

"Oh,  very  few;  but  you  need  not  think  it  is  hard  to  stop 
one  of  these  important  trains.  When  we  were  planning  this 
fine  scheme,  we  tested  it, —  rehearsed  it, —  forgive  the  word, 
since  we  are  speaking  of  an  actress.  We  learned  that  Sarah 
Bernhardt  was  to  pass  through  Green  River,  Wyoming,  a  week 
later.  We  wanted  to  know  if  it  would  be  possible  to  stop  a 
train  long  enough  to  carry  out  our  project.  There  were  eleven 
of  us  knights  of  the  '  round  up  '  as  they  say  out  there,  all  well 
mounted,  all  with  that  sort  of  ardor  for  danger  which  in  youth 
so  easily  leads  to  a  misuse  of  strength.  We  posted  ourselves, 
in  broad  daylight,  at  a  place  where  the  line  made  such  sharp 
curves  that  the  express  was  obliged  to  slow  up.  It  appeared 
in  sight.  One  of  us  galloped  alongside  of  the  locomotive, 
guiding  his  pony  with  his  knees,  covering  the  engineer  with 
his  rifle.  I  did  the  same  on  the  other  side.  The  engineer 
stopped  his  train.  Our  comrades  dismounted  and  went 
through  the  train,  with  revolvers  cocked,  crying  '  Hands  up ! ' 
We  risked  a  terrible  scrimmage  if  there  had  been  a  man  there 
plucky  enough  to  draw  his  weapon.  Luckily  there  was  not. 
While  the  terrified  travellers  were  hurriedly  opening  their 


THE  LOWER   ORDERS  241 

valises  to  buy  their  liberty,  the  pretended  robbers  had  already 
remounted,  and  away  we  went,  firing  our  pieces  into  the  air." 

"How  about  the  police?"  I  asked. 

"They  were  represented,"  replied  M.  Barrin-Conde",  "by 
a  sheriff  who  lived  eighty  miles  off,  and  who,  I  think,  is  still 
investigating  the  matter.  And  besides, —  for  everything  in  the 
West  has  its  grotesque  side,  and  it  all  seems  natural  enough 
when  one  is  carried  along  by  this  life,  —  we  were  all  masked, 
or  at  least  our  faces  were  muffled  in  handkerchiefs.  Though 
the  experiment  was  successful,  we  perceived  one  danger. 
We  wanted  to  play  a  joke,  which  I  leave  it  to  you  to  qualify, 
but  we  did  not  wish  to  run  the  risk  of  killing  or  being  killed. 
We  decided,  therefore,  to  carry  off  Sarah  Bernhardt  from  the 
station  itself.  Her  train  was  due  at  Green  River  at  eleven 
fifty-two.  We  were  to  rush  into  her  car,  carry  her  out  by 
main  force,  put  her  in  a  buggy,  and  gallop  off  at  full  speed. 
Some  of  the  party  were  to  protect  our  retreat  with  their  revol 
vers.  One  of  us,  a  certain  Sarlat,  who  is  now  a  captain  of 
infantry  in  Africa,  was  charged  to  board  the  train  at  the  pre 
ceding  station.  It  was  understood  that  he  was  to  wave  his 
handkerchief  at  the  door  of  the  parlor  car  in  which  the  great 
actress  might  happen  to  be,  for  it  would  be  necessary  to  act 
promptly  and  to  the  purpose.  Such  an  operation  is  always 
a  little  dangerous  in  a  village. 

"  Sarlat,  therefore,  set  off,  as  it  had  been  arranged,  and  we 
waited  patiently  at  the  station,  grouped  on  horseback  around 
the  buggy.  Perhaps  if  you  had  heard  our  remarks,  you  would 
have  decided  that  this  unreasonable  attempt  was  even  more 
ingenuous  than  unreasonable.  No  doubt  our  illustrious  guest 
would  struggle.  She  would  have  hysterics.  We  should  have 
to  bind  her.  But  once  at  the  ranch,  we  should  make  her 
amends  by  our  respect.  She  should  be  received  like  an  em 
press.  We  should  obtain  her  pardon  and  would  live  over  again 
a  few  days  of  France,  getting  her  to  recite  for  us  the  finest 


242  OUTRE-MER 

passages  in  her  repertory.  The  train  did  not  arrive  till  mid 
night,  and  then  we  saw  Sarlat  get  down,  with  no  handker 
chief  in  sight.  Sarah  Bernhardt  had  passed  through  the  town 
an  hour  earlier,  by  the  Salt  Lake  City  express." 

This  extraordinary  story  was  told  so  naturally,  it  represented 
customs  so  peculiar  to  the  country,  it  showed  such  a  curious 
medley  of  delicate  civilization  and  savage  life,  that  I  did  not 
rest  until  I  had  extracted  from  M.  Barrin-Conde  a  promise  to 
send  me  some  of  his  notes  regarding  his  residence  at  Lance- 
Head,  his  journal,  if  he  had  kept  one,  a  few  recollections  at 
least.  He  promised,  but  several  weeks  passed  before  I  re 
ceived  the  papers  I  asked  for,  or  even  any  news  of  the  young 
man.  He  had  gone  back  home,  and  I  went  on  travelling  over 
the  vast  Republic.  I  was  persuaded  that  the  documents  of 
which  I  had  so  unexpectedly  learned  would  never  reach  me. 
They  found  me,  however,  when  I  had  given  up  expecting 
them.  Whether  it  was  the  pleasure  of  an  agreeable  disap 
pointment, —  we  so  seldom  enjoy  one!  —  or  whether  it  was 
really  the  originality  of  his  confidences,  it  seemed  to  me  that 
they  were  worth  transcribing  just  as  they  were,  without  com 
mentary.  What  analysis  could  be  as  valuable  as  the  testimony 
of  the  man  of  action,  who  has  seen  that  of  which  he  speaks, 
not,  like  a  learned  man,  in  the  pages  of  books,  not  in  the 
amateurish  way  of  one  who  travels  for  pleasure,  but  as  one 
who  could  do  no  otherwise. 

Perhaps,  also,  the  place  where  I  received  the  packet  with 
a  Toronto  stamp  made  me  more  than  ever  sensitive  to  the 
picturesque  quality  of  these  pages.  It  was  in  October,  in  a 
quiet,  deserted  hotel,  among  the  fallen  leaves,  beside  the 
Falls  of  Niagara,  which  are  still,  in  spite  of  the  declamations 
of  guide-books,  one  of  the  noblest  and  most  striking  specta 
cles  in  this  world.  All  that  men  may  build  around  it,  of 
bridges,  stairways,  balustrades,  all  the  paths  they  may  make, 
or  the  advertisements  they  may  stick  up,  cannot  affect  the 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  243 

inviolable  and  mighty  beauty  of  these  two  great  cascades. 
How  I  loved  the  slow,  soft  slide,  the  monotonous  fall  of  the 
tremendous  current  over  the  edge  of  the  rock,  that  here  forms 
a  sharp  right  angle !  How  I  loved  the  deep  wail,  the  com 
plaining  murmur, —  so  much  sadness  in  so  much  power, —  and 
the  wavering  mist,  that  cloud  of  humid  incense  that  floats 
above  the  lowest  fall,  rising,  transparent  in  whiteness,  above 
the  great  green  mass.  Yes,  and  I  loved  it,  in  that  season  of 
the  year,  the  autumnal  softness,  the  golden  woods  of  Goat 
Island,  without  a  bird,  with  only  this  strange  sobbing  sound 
to  fill  them  and  speak  of  the  irrevocable  end  of  summer, — 
symbol  of  the  inevitable  flowing  away  of  life ! 

As  I  walked  about  in  these  groves,  so  dishonored  by  adver 
tisements,  I  regretted  the  coming  of  the  white  man,  the  civi 
lized  being,  who  is  so  much  more  destructive  than  the  savage. 
I  thought  of  the  cruel  but  simple-minded  Indians,  the  yellow, 
tattooed  warriors,  who  respected  nature  and  did  not  mutilate 
her.  I  cursed  the  civilized  man  for  having  defaced  this 
admirable  landscape  with  those  factory  chimneys,  that  pour 
forth  their  black  smoke  toward  heaven,  and  those  wrought- 
iron  elevator  towers.  I  felt  the  need  of  calling  up  before  me, 
in  this  scene  of  grandeur,  a  freer,  more  hardy  existence,  more 
conformed  to  the  mysterious  and  tragic  beauty  of  this  great 
river,  so  suddenly  precipitated  into  this  gulf. 

The  narrative  of  the  colonist  adventurer  of  Lance-Head 
doubtless  met  this  wish.  Nevertheless,  reading  the  manu 
script  over  in  cold  blood,  I  still  think  that  it  does  not  need 
such  a  setting,  and  I  have  no  hesitation  in  copying  it  here, 
hardly  modifying  it  in  any  respect.  The  reader  will  judge 
whether  it  would  be  easy  or  difficult  to  engage  in  revolution 
men  who  live  in  the  atmosphere  of  danger  and  conquest  which 
exhales  from  these  unquestionably  true  notes.  He  will  also, 
it  seems  to  me,  more  easily  understand  the  reasons  why  energy 
and  will  are  here  developed,  even  to  hypertrophy.  And  per- 


244  OUTRE-MER 

haps  the  incongruity  of  the  circumstances  under  which  these 
pages  reached  me,  and  which  I  have  reproduced  at  the  risk  of 
breaking  the  apparent  unity  of  my  own  study,  will  give  a  truer 
picture  of  all  that  is  chaotic  and  arbitrarily  connected  in 
American  life. 

You  visit  an  exhibition  where  antediluvian  monsters  are 
lighted  up  by  electricity ;  you  attend  meetings  where  religious 
fervor  alternates  with  charlatanism ;  you  see  plays  by  Moliere 
given  by  fine  actors  to  an  audience  of  barbarians,  next  door  to 
a  theatre  where  Shakespeare's  plays  are  given  by  English  actors  ; 
you  rub  elbows  with  Kansas  farmers  and  Parisians ;  you  go  in 
a  Pullman  car  to  scenes  of  nature,  such  as  Chateaubriand 
described, —  and  all  these  madly  complex  impressions  group 
themselves  at  last  around  a  story  told  by  a  former  volunteer, 
once  garrisoned  for  a  year  in  some  little  provincial  French 
town,  of  his  adventures  in  an  unexplored  valley  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  ! 

A  COWBOY'S  STORY 

My  ancestors  were  originally  from  Florence,  whence,  about 
1270,  they,  with  several  other  Ghibellines,  emigrated  to 
Dauphiny.  We  were  then  called  Barberini,  though  without 
ever  having  had  anything  in  common  with  the  noble  Romans 
of  that  name.  From  Barberini  we  became  Barberin,  then,  by 
some  means,  Barrin.  About  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  a 
certain  Raymond  Barrin  headed  a  troop  of  young  men  to  hunt 
out  certain  brigands  that  infested  the  district.  "  He  fought  like 
a  CondeY'  every  one  said.  The  name  stuck  by  him,  and  we 
have  kept  it  ever  since. 

Whether  it  was  that  I  heard  much  in  my  childhood  of  the 
ancestor  whose  name  I  bear,  or  whether  it  was  simply  the 
inheritance  of  a  restless  race,  always  ready  for  action,  certain  it 
is  that  while  yet  a  youth  I  began  to  dream  of  adventures. 
When,  on  quitting  the  regiment,  I  found  myself  once  more  in 


THE  LOWER   ORDERS  245 

my  father's  house,  with  no  other  prospect  before  me  than  to 
grow  old  there,  indolent  and  useless,  the  thought  of  such  a  fate 
became  physically  insupportable. 

Yet  I  loved  my  family,  I  loved  our  house,  I  loved  Dauphiny, 
its  mgged  mountains,  its  clear  sky,  its  peasants  and  their 
accent,  and,  above  all,  the  past  which  they  represented  to  me. 
I  had  always  been  a  man  of  the  former  time,  a  devotee  in  every 
sense  you  may  choose  to  give  to  this  word.  You  might  have 
seen  me  on  the  eve  of  departing  for  the  United  States  going 
to  our  village  cemetery,  kneeling  upon  our  family  tomb,  and 
picking  up  some  of  its  pebbles  ;  I  have  them  still.  But  nothing 
could  prevail  against  the  appetite  for  action  which  consumed 
me,  urging  me,  though  so  young,  to  cross  the  seas. 

I  must  add  that  being  a  Royalist  by  tradition  and  conviction, 
it  would  have  seemed  to  me  a  crime  to  serve  the  Republic.  I 
had  no  commercial  acquaintance  nor  any  capital  that  would 
enable  me  to  set  up  in  business,  while  to  think  of  marrying  an 
heiress  was  revolting  to  my  pride. 

In  short,  in  November,  188-,  I  returned  as  a  volunteer  to 
my  regiment.  By  December  my  resolution  was  taken  ;  I  would 
seek  my  fortune  in  America.  In  February  I  embarked  at 
Liverpool  with  a  friend  of  my  boyhood,  an  Englishman,  the 

Honorable  Herbert  V ,  who  had  decided  to  go  with  me. 

We  took  with  us  four  stallions,  two  percherons,  two  Arabs,  and 
my  regimental  groom.  We  were  going  to  set  up  a  little  stud 
farm  in  the  Black  Hills  of  Dakota,  and  had  been  in  corres 
pondence  with  a  ranchman  of  that  country,  named  Johnson. 
Our  entire  capital  for  this  enterprise  was  the  support  of  this 
man,  whom  it  happened  that  some  of  Herbert's  friends  knew, 
our  four  horses,  and  a  draft  for  thirty  thousand  francs.  I  for 
got  to  mention  our  youth  and  energy.  Many  people  have 
begun  under  worse  auspices. 

The  steamer,  which  from  motives  of  economy  we  had 
chosen,  went  partly  by  the  aid  of  sail,  so  that  we  were  seven- 


246  OUTRE-MER 

teen  days  in  reaching  New  York.  The  passage  was  pretty 
rough,  but  I  do  not  suffer  from  the  sea,  and  as  I  had  not  only 
to  take  care  of  my  comrade  and  my  groom,  both  of  whom 
were  very  ill,  but  also  of  the  horses,  I  had  no  leisure  for 
melancholy  thoughts  at  the  beginning  of  my  exile.  The  first 
heartrending  sense  of  expatriation  took  possession  of  me  in  the 
tumult  of  the  great  American  city,  amid  the  crowd  whose 
language  I  did  not  know,  and  whom  at  first  I  found  so  uncouth, 
so  hostile,  more  than  all,  so  different  from  what  I  was  used  to. 
We  were  lodging  in  Brooklyn,  at  the  recommendation  of  the 
ship's  captain  that  we  might  find  good  stabling  near  the  railway 
stations.  Several  days  we  spent  in  visiting  the  town,  which 
with  its  hastily-built  houses,  some  so  high,  the  others  so  low, 
with  their  tall  iron  chimneys,  and  the  fever  of  its  populace, 
gave  us  the  impression  of  something  wild  and  monstrous.  To 
fill  up  the  measure  of  our  wretchedness,  our  hotel  was  a  verit 
able  den  of  drunkenness  and  prostitution,  where  we  came  near 
losing  all  we  had  the  very  first  week  of  our  arrival,  as  the  result 
of  a  stupid  adventure. 

Herbert  and  I  had  spent  the  first  four  evenings  at  the  theatre. 
The  fifth,  proposing  to  go  to  bed  early,  we  had  gone  into  the 
bar-room  to  smoke  awhile  after  dinner.  Some  women  and  a 
few  men  were  there.  One  of  them,  a  great  hulking  fellow,  a 
former  soldier,  red-haired,  wall-eyed,  with  a  bulldog  face,  took 
upon  himself  to  talk  loud  to  one  of  the  girls,  looking  at  us  the 
while.  A  coarse  laugh  that  followed  would  have  irritated  me 
even  if  Herbert  had  not  at  my  request  interpreted  the  fellow's 
imbecile  joke.  He  had  said  to  the  girl :  — 

"Get  that  Frenchman  to  take  you.  He  must  be  a  

They  all  are." 

I  omit  the  insulting  word  he  made  use  of.  I  sprang  up, 
roughly  shaking  off  Herbert,  who  would  have  detained  me,  and 
walked  straight  to  the  man.  Seeing  me  coming,  but  trusting 
to  his  strength,  he  began  to  defy  me  with  a  smile  which  I  can 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  247 

still  see,  with  the  shining  of  a  gold-plugged  tooth  which  he  had 
on  the  left  side  of  his  mouth.  I  gave  him  a  blow  of  my  fist  full 
in  the  face  with  such  strength  as  to  bring  the  "claret,"  as  they 
say  in  America ;  that  is,  his  face  was  bathed  in  blood.  I  had 
practised  boxing  in  the  regiment  and  was  very  nimble,  and  I  had 
the  good  luck  to  avoid  his  return  blow  —  he  was  slightly  drunk 
—  and  to  hit  him  a  second  time  in  the  stomach,  throwing  him 
to  the  ground.  I  expected  a  scuffle,  and  drew  back  to  face  the 
others  when,  to  my  surprise,  they  uttered  a  murmur  of  admira 
tion.  The  singular  audience  were  applauding  my  pugilistic 
talent.  They  carried  off  their  friend,  but  that  very  evening  the 
proprietor  of  the  hotel  said  briefly  to  Herbert :  — 

"The  gentleman  would  better  change  his  quarters.  Jim 
Russell  is  not  the  man  to  put  up  with  that  without  taking  his 
revenge." 

Although  neither  Herbert  nor  I  was  easily  frightened,  the 
idea  of  being  hindered  at  the  very  outset  of  our  enterprise  by 
a  low  quarrel  like  this  seemed  to  us  so  absurd  that  we  decided 
not,  as  our  host  had  advised,  to  change  our  lodgings,  but  to  take 
our  departure.  The .  very  next  morning  we  took  the  conti 
nental  express-freight  train,  with  our  horses  and  our  luggage. 
It  would  take  seven  days  —  a  whole  week  —  for  us  to  reach 
the  town  of  Sydney  in  Nebraska,  where  we  had  appointed  to 
meet  Johnson.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  send  our  horses 
by  this  train  and  ourselves  to  take  the  regular  express  train. 
But  our  first  impression  of  American  life  had  thus  been  so 
disagreeable  that  we  thought  ourselves  in  a  barbarous  country, 
and  would  neither  separate  from  one  another  nor  lose  sight  of 
our  stallions  for  a  minute. 

We  made  the  whole  journey  then,  in  the  same  car  as  the 
beasts.  This  method  of  locomotion  was  so  uncomfortable  that 
we  paid  no  attention  to  the  country  through  which  we  passed. 
I  remember  nothing  of  this  singular  journey  across  the  im 
mense  continent  as  wide  as  Europe,  except  that  at  Chicago  we 


248  OUTRE-MER 

had  to  resist  by  force  four  "  tramps,"  who  entered  our  car  in 
tending  to  hide  behind  our  horses  and  "  steal  a  ride  "  — that  is 
their  expression.  These  wayfarers  of  the  United  States  have 
the  habit  of  passing  over  incredible  distances  crouched  on  the 
floor  of  a  freight  car.  At  the  entrance  to  the  towns  they  jump 
off —  a  tramp  must  necessarily  be  something  of  a  gymnast  — 
and  get  aboard  of  some  other  train  just  going  out,  having,  if 
possible,  joined  some  more  productive  rapine  to  their  theft  of 
a  ride.  In  general,  these  poor  fellows  are  inoffensive ;  but  not 
being  familiar  with  the  picturesque  features  of  American  vaga 
bondage,  we  supposed  ragamuffins  who  could  board  moving 
trains  to  be  dangerous  robbers.  I  could  laugh  yet  at  the  mem 
ory  of  the  way  they  hopped  over  to  the  bank  beside  the  track 
at  sight  of  the  six  revolvers  that  we  pointed  at  them.  We 
should  have  deemed  ourselves  imprudent  to  have  had  only 
one  weapon  apiece  ! 

Johnson,  advised  by  telegraph,  was  indeed  awaiting  us  at  the 
Sydney  station ;  but  we  were  in  fact  only  one  stage  nearer  the 
real  end  of  our  journey,  —  Custer  City,  two  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  beyond.  These  miles  we  must  cover  on  horseback,  and 
the  seven  days  in  the  freight  car  had  so  shattered  us  that  we 
had  not  the  courage  to  set  forth  at  once. 

At  that  time  Sydney  had  the  name  of  being  one  of  the  most 
dangerous  nests  of  thieves  in  the  United  States.  The  five 
hundred  inhabitants  of  the  town  —  a  veritable  mushroom  of 
the  railroad,  which  would  have  disappeared  with  it  —  spent 
their  time  in  a  series  of  real  battles,  arming  themselves  with 
guns  and  revolvers.  We  did  not  know  this.  But  our  new  ex 
perience  in  Chicago  had  made  us  so  wary  that  we  resolved  to 
sleep  on  straw  across  the  door  of  the  stable  where  our  Arabs 
were  lodged,  for  they  had  been  quite  too  much  observed  as  we 
brought  them  in.  It  was  well  for  us  that  we  took  this  precau 
tion.  Toward  midnight,  in  spite  of  weariness,  I  was  awakened 
by  a  strange  sound.  I  struck  a  match  and  distinctly  saw  the 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  249 

end  of  a  saw  in  the  act  of  cutting  the  wood  around  the  lock 
that  fastened  the  barn.  I  wrapped  one  of  my  hands  in  a  hand 
kerchief  and  gripped  the  end  of  the  saw,  cocking  my  revolver 
with  the  other,  and  uttering  the  only  English  oath  that  I  knew 
—  you  can  guess  what  it  was.  The  saw  remained  motionless, 
and  on  the  other  side  of  the  door  I  heard  a  click  like  that 
which  I  had  just  made  with  my  own  weapon. 

I  aroused  Herbert  and  my  servant.  Our  three  voices  made 
the  robbers  understand  that  we  were  in  force.  We  heard  re 
treating  footsteps  ;  our  horses  were  saved.  But  how  could  we 
go  to  sleep  again  after  this  new  alarm  ?  Our  anxiety  was  so 
great  that  we  resolved  to  leave  Sydney  as  we  had  left  Brooklyn, 
and  not  the  next  morning,  not  an  hour  later,  but  at  once.  We 
saddled  our  horses  with  our  own  hands.  We  drew  Johnson's 
wagon  from  its  shelter,  put  in  our  baggage,  and  harnessed  the 
horses.  Thus  equipped,  we  went  out  into  the  street  to  call  up 
to  him  in  the  hope  of  arousing  him  from  his  first  sleep.  He 
had  been  playing  poker  and  drinking  whiskey  all  night,  and 
having  by  good  luck  won  several  hundred  dollars,  he  was  more 
accommodating  than  we  could  have  hoped.  Besides,  like 
many  Americans,  he  had  a  sentiment  of  national  hospitality, 
and  was  ashamed  for  his  country  of  the  robber-den  where  he 
had  met  us.  He  was  willing  to  go  with  us,  and  before  dawn 
we  were  on  our  way. 

Our  ride  across  the  prairie  lasted  two  long  weeks,  and  I  owe 
to  it  the  first  pleasant  impressions  which  J  had  experienced 
since  my  departure  from  Dauphiny.  This  portion  of  the  broad 
territory  that  extends  between  Sydney  and  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains  was  not  then  the  civilized  country  that  it  has  since  be 
come.  At  the  present  day  several  lines  of  railways  furrow  it ; 
farms  abound  and  the  embryos  of  large  and  small  towns.  At 
that  epoch,  from  Sydney  westward  the  vast  prairie  of  Nebraska 
presented  no  other  trace  of  human  life  than  passing  cowboys, 


250  OUTRE-MER 

driving  before  them  some  scattered  herd.  Ranch  succeeded 
ranch,  with  no  road  leading  from  one  to  another.  The  immense 
extent  of  desert  through  which  our  cavalcade  was  moving  ap 
pealed  to  us  with  a  sort  of  savage  charm,  in  which  our  feeling 
of  youth  and  of  an  unlimited  future  counted  for  much.  The 
desolate  solitude  inspired  instead  of  saddening  us,  as  our  con 
tact  with  the  foreign  multitude  had  done.  We  no  longer  felt 
ourselves  weary,  and  we  even  drank  with  light  hearts  the  abom 
inable  alkaline  waters  that  we  scooped  up  from  the  crevices  of 
the  ground  —  creeks,  as  they  call  them  —  to  water  our  horses. 

Our  excitement  increased  as  we  drew  near  to  the  mountains 
and  entered  the  great  forests  of  Douglas  pines.  The  first 
spring  flowers  were  peeping  through  the  grass.  Transparent 
running  waters  gushed  out  everywhere  from  fissures  in  the 
quartz.  The  sky  was  blue  and  high  above  our  heads ;  and 
besides,  we  were  drawing  near  to  Custer  City,  the  town  of 
whose  magnificence  Johnson  had  been  boasting  ever  since  we 
set  out.  We  were  looking  forward  to  it  as  the  Hebrews  to  the 
Promised  Land.  Many  a  year  has  passed  since  then,  years  of 
bitter  struggle  which  count  double  and  triple.  Not  one  of  their 
sensations  has  effaced  the  intense  strain  of  expectancy  of  that 
April  afternoon  when  our  worthy  friend  led  us  up  a  hill  at  a 
gallop,  that  he  might  proudly  point  us  to  the  end  of  our  hard 
pilgrimage.  He  checked  his  horse,  made  signal  to  us  to  do 
the  same,  and  extending  his  arm  he  said :  — 

"  There  is  Custer  City." 

I  looked,  my  heart  beating  hard  with  hope.  Why  should  I 
blush  to  own  to  one  moment  of  cowardice,  the  only  one  that  I 
knew  in  all  my  prairie  life  ?  Tears  that  I  could  not  restrain 
suddenly  gushed  from  my  eyes  —  tears  not  of  hope,  but  of 
despair,  tears  wrung  from  me  by  atrocious  disappointment, 
the  sudden  collapse  of  all  my  high  dreams. 

A  wretched  mining-camp  lay  on  the  other  side  of  the  valley, 
more  miserable  than  the  poorest  hamlet  in  the  Alps.  And  it 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  251 

was  to  live  there,  in  one  of  those  hovels,  in  this  remote  corner 
of  the  world,  to  struggle  there,  to  die  there,  perhaps,  that  I  had 
left  three  thousand  leagues  behind  me  our  little  chateau  in 
Dauphiny,\with  its  three  square  towers  and  its  square  donjon, 
and  in  the  chateau  my  mother,  my  sisters,  everything  that  I 
loved  and  that  loved  me  ! 

Then  I  looked  at  Herbert,  and  was  ashamed  that  I,  a  French 
man,  should  have  shown  such  weakness  before  this  impassible 
Englishman.  He  was  lighting  his  short  pipe  with  the  finest 
possible  coolness,  although  I  saw  well  enough,  from  the  trem 
bling  of  his  hand,  that  the  shock  had  been  severe  to  him,  also. 
I  have  told  you  that  I  have  always  been  a  little  religious.  I 
called  to  my  aid  the  innermost  forces  of  my  soul.  I  offered 
to  God  a  prayer  of  thanksgiving  for  having  protected  me  since 
my  setting  forth,  and  asked  him  to  protect  me  still.  I  put 
myself  into  his  hands,  like  a  little  child.  My  horse,  El  Mahdi, 
pawed  the  ground,  and  neighed.  It  was  his  way  of  saying, 
"  Here  is  Custer  City."  I  gathered  up  the  reins,  and,  pressing 
my  knees  against  his  flanks,  set  out  at  full  speed  for  the  city, 
leaving  my  childish  tears  to  be  dried  by  the  wind  of  my 
headlong  course. 

So,  under  a  glorious  sunset,  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Calamity 
Jane  the  "tenderfoot"  Raymond  died,  on  his  first  arrival 
from  Europe.  And  in  his  place  arose  the  cowboy  Sheffield, 
—  so  named  because  of  his  knife-blade  face,  —  he  who  wrote 
these  memoirs. 

Some  time  later,  about  a  month,  I  was  quietly  breakfasting 
in  Miller's  bar-room,  situated  in  the  principal  street,  —  Main 
Street, — when  a  well-known  miner,  Big  Browne,  began  to  quarrel 
with  a  cowboy  who  had  left  his  ranch,  Eddie  Hutts. 

Both  drew  their  revolvers  and  fired  at  the  same  moment. 
Browne  fell  stone  dead.  His  opponent's  ball  had  gone  through 
his  head.  But  his  ball  had  taken  me  square  in  the  jaw,  break 
ing  the  bone,  and  stopping  near  the  artery.  Miller,  who  pro- 


252  OUTRE-MER 

fessed  a  particular  esteem  for  Browne,  has  often,  since  then, 
tried  to  excuse  his  friend,  with  the  plea  that  the  unfortunate 
man  had  that  morning  taken  a  few  too  many  "  corpse  revivers." 
The  Americans  have  a  jolly  lot  of  names  for  the  various  alco 
holic  mixtures  with  which  they  delight  to  poison  themselves  : 
"a  widow's  smile,"  "a  sweet  recollection,"  "an  eye  opener." 
The  most  potent  of  all  was  the  one  used  by  Miller,  the  "  corpse 
reviver."  There  was  some  irony  in  the  circumstance,  since  the 
intemperance  of  that  brute  Browne  nearly  caused  two  deaths, 
his  own  and  mine. 

I  had  sprung  up  when  I  found  myself  wounded,  but  I  had 
not  strength  to  take  a  step.  Everything  seemed  to  turn  around 
me,  and  I  fell  as  if  struck  down  by  a  blow.  Consciousness 
quickly  returned,  with  that  sort  of  lucid  and  unavailing  atten 
tion  that  we  have  in  dreams.  I  was  lying  on  the  ground  near 
Browne's  dead  body.  I  could  have  touched  it  by  reaching  out 
my  hand.  Half  a  score  of  faces,  all  automatically  moving 
in  the  act  of  chewing  tobacco,  were  gazing  curiously  upon 
me,  without  any  one  thinking  of  coming  to  my  aid.  My 
blood  was  still  flowing  upon  the  floor,  and  I  was  suffering 
cruelly.  I  asked  for  a  priest,  but  I  spoke  in  French  and  no 
one  understood  me.  For  that  matter,  the  nearest  was  a  hun 
dred  and  fifty  miles  away,  and  what  need  had  I  of  a  priest,  to 
die  like  Browne?  One  more  or  less  doesn't  count  on  the 
prairie. 

Seeing  that  not  one  of  the  men  around  me  so  much  as 
shifted  the  quid  in  his  cheek,  so  indifferent  were  they  to  my 
appeal,  I  began  to  shout,  or  rather  to  gurgle,  the  names  of 
Herbert  and  Johnson.  Within  a  quarter  of  an  hour  my  friends 
both  arrived,  accompanied  by  an  ill-favored  personage  in  a 
frock  coat,  with  a  ten  days'  beard,  a  battered  silk  hat,  a  white 
necktie  streaked  with  dirt,  and  diamond  studs  shining  in  his 
frayed  shirt.  This  was  the  celebrated  Dr.  Briggs,  the  princi 
pal  physician  in  the  Black  Hills,  a  somewhat  skilful  surgeon, 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  253 

though  even  the  Americans  thought  him  "  rather  fond  of  the 
knife,  you  know."  He  was  usually  drunk  at  ten  in  the  morn 
ing,  but  by  good  luck  he  was  now  sober.  I  had  abundant 
leisure  to  note  the  details  of  the  picturesque  dilapidation  of 
his  costume;  for  having  caused  me  to  be  laid  upon  the  billiard 
table  he  began  to  probe  the  wound,  very  gently,  I  must  admit, 
while  drops  of  tobacco  juice  fell  from  his  lips  upon  my  face. 

"Well!"  he  concluded,  with  a  coolness  hardly  reassuring. 
"The  gentleman  has  had  a  lucky  escape.  The  ball  has  just 
grazed  the  artery.  The  bones  will  soon  knit,  but,  as  to  the 
ball,  if  he  lets  it  remain  it  will  by  degrees  wear  through  the 
artery,  and  will  suddenly  burst  sometime,  causing  internal 
effusion  and  sudden  death.  If  he  prefers  to  have  me  remove 
it,  I  can  try,  but  I  will  answer  for  nothing.  It  is  for  him  to 
choose." 

Herbert  translated  for  me  this  redoubtable  diagnosis.  I 
mentally  performed  my  act  of  contrition  and  said  that  the 
ball  was  to  be  removed.  Before  probing  the  wound,  Briggs 
had  cleared  the  room  of  every  one  except  Herbert  and  John 
son.  He  now  called  by  name  six  of  the  men  who  were  stand 
ing  around  the  door,  who  ranged  themselves,  grave  and  in 
different,  around  the  billiard  table. 

"Why?"  I  asked  Herbert,  who  was  still  acting  as  inter 
preter. 

"Well,"  replied  Briggs,  "these  gentlemen  are  the  first  citi 
zens  of  the  town,  and  they  will  testify  that  it  is  no  fault  of 
mine  if  death  occurs  during  the  operation." 

With  these  words  I  fell  asleep  under  the  sickish  odor  of 
chloroform.  When  I  awoke,  I  had  a  great  slit  in  my  throat 
and  the  ball  in  my  hand.  The  best  citizens  disappeared,  en 
chanted  at  having  had  this  little  morning  "  excitement."  The 
doctor  received  three  hundred  dollars. 

A  month  later  my  jaw  was  well,  but  I  had  lost  so  much 
blood  that  it  was  some  weeks  before  I  recovered  strength. 


254  OUTRE-MER 

As  to  Briggs,  meeting  him  three  years  later  at  Rapid  City,  at 
the  time  of  a  hotly  contested  election,  he  dragged  me  up  to 
the  platform,  exhibited  me  and  my  scar  to  fifteen  hundred 
loafers,  and  secured  a  brilliant  victory  over  his  opponent.  It 
appeared  that  I  was  his  sole  living  witness  to  a  successful 
operation ! 

This  sample  of  the  manners  and  customs  then  reigning  m 
Custer  City  will  convince  you  that  this  abode  of  idleness,  in 
temperance,  and  assassination  did  not  keep  us  long.  For  that 
matter,  we  could  hardly  make  a  living  there.  The  smallest 
necessaries  of  life  were  horribly  dear,  as  in  all  mining  towns. 
For  example,  at  Custer  it  never  occurred  to  any  one  to  ask 
change  for  a  nickel.  The  five-cent  piece  was  the  unit  of  ex' 
penditure.  It  is  hard  to  conceive  of  the  ravages  which  such 
trifles  made  in  small  incomes  like  ours.  We  resolved,  there 
fore,  to  return  to  our  original  plan,  and  select  a  ranch,  a  widtf 
pasturage,  watered  by  living  streams,  where  we  could  devote 
ourselves  to  horse  breeding. 

We  had  the  luck  to  find  almost  immediately  such  a  place  a? 
we  sought,  and  we  named  our  little  establishment  Lance- 
Head,  because  in  digging  the  foundations  of  our  house  we 
found  an  iron  point,  which  had  no  doubt  dropped  many  years 
before  from  some  Indian's  arrow.  With  roughly  hewn  beams, 
ill-planed  boards,  and  wooden  pegs,  —  nails  were  scarce  in  those 
parts,  —  we  managed  to  put  up  a  sort  of  barrack  for  ourselves 
and  a  stable  for  our  horses.  This  work  cost  us  no  less  than 
six  months'  labor,  during  which  we  were  too  busy  to  concern 
ourselves  with  the  ranch  itself.  Now  calculate:  a  fortnight's 
voyage,  five  days  in  New  York,  seven  on  the  railway,  two 
weeks  on  the  prairie,  come  to  more  than  a  month.  A  month 
of  expectation,  a  month  of  illness,  a  month  of  convalescence, 
make  three  months.  Add  to  this  six  months  devoted  to  our 
wretched  little  building,  and  you  have  nearly  a  year  since  we 
left  our  homes, —  Herbert's  in  Derbyshire  and  mine  in  Dau- 


THE  LOWER   ORDERS  255 

phiny.  And  in  the  course  of  this  time  I  had  nearly  died,  we 
had  impaired  our  joint  capital,  and  our  sole  acquisition  was 
this  "log-house,"  this  hut  built  with  our  own  hands! 

And  we  held  this  property  only  on  condition  of  defending 
it.  The  stream  and  pasturage  had  belonged  to  a  former 
proprietor,  Bob,  a  well-known  horse  thief,  called  "Yorkey 
Bob,"  from  his  native  city.  This  rascal,  by  abandoning  this 
property,  had  forfeited  all  his  rights  in  it.  That,  however, 
was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  undertake  to  fleece  the  new 
occupants;  and,  in  fact,  having  returned  to  Custer  City,  he 
loudly  proclaimed  in  Miller's  "saloon"  :  — 

"  I  shall  soon  settle  up  with  those  two  European  tenderfeet. 
I'll  teach  them  to  enter  upon  my  succession  before  my  death !  " 

This  reassuring  remark  was  reported  to  us  by  Dr.  Briggs, 
who  lavished  visits  upon  us.  When  my  "savior,"  as  he 
freely  called  himself,  had  given  us  this  so-called  evidence  of 
sympathy,  Herbert  and  I  looked  at  one  another.  Each  read 
in  the  other's  eyes  a  desire  to  mount  at  once  and  be  the  first 
to  settle  accounts  with  this  saloon  bully.  On  the  prairie  one 
soon  comes  to  this  theory  of  legitimate  defence, —  to  attack 
first  and  not  be  attacked.  Very  happily,  we  did  not  yield 
to  this  impulse  of  preventive  indignation.  Herbert  had  the 
presence  of  mind  to  concoct  a  test  which  should  forever  safe 
guard  us  from  all  threats  of  this  kind.  He  took  aim  at  an 
unconscious  pigeon  that  was  cooing  on  the  roof  of  the  stable 
fifty  feet  away,  and  brought  it  down  with  his  revolver. 

"You  may  tell  Yorkey  Bob  what  you  have  seen,"  he  said 
to  Briggs,  "  and  add  that  if  ever  I  meet  him,  wherever  it  may 
be,  in  a  bar-room,  in  the  street,  or  on  the  prairie,  I  shall  do 
as  much  for  him." 

He  turned  his  back  upon  the  doctor.  This  worthy  stood 
for  a  moment  as  if  nonplussed,  then  spat  at  a  distant  point. 
It  is  the  American  token  of  profound  impression.  I  have 
always  thought  that  his  purpose  in  coming  had  been  to  pro- 


256  OUTRE-MER 

pose  to  the  new  proprietors,  in  the  name  of  the  old,  a  good 
and  firm  treaty  of  alliance,  cemented  by  hard  cash.  However 
that  may  be,  Herbert's  pistol-shot  and  his  little  remark 
sufficed  to  discourage  this  intention.  But  for  two  whole 
months  we  were  on  the  alert,  sleeping  out  of  doors  every  night 
for  fear  of  a  surprise.  As  to  precautions  by  day,  we  could 
not  have  taken  more.  The  times  were  so  troubled  that  if  two 
horsemen  saw  one  another  at  five  miles'  distance  on  the 
prairie,  each  would  turn  in  the  opposite  direction.  Strange 
desert,  which  man  sought  to  make  still  more  deserted,  and 
where  he  dreaded  nothing  but  his  own  kind !  This  was  the 
time  when  the  Deadwood  mail  was  looted  about  once  a  month, 
the  time  when  the  carriage  of  the  Lead  City  receiver,  notwith 
standing  its  escort  of  six  horsemen,  was  held  up,  and  the  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  that  it  contained  —  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  francs  in  gold  bars  —  dispersed  to 
the  four  corners  of  Dakota  and  Wyoming.  A  flood  of  adven 
turers,  the  scum  of  all  countries  and  all  races,  had  over 
whelmed  Deadwood,  where  a  new  lead  of  gold  had  jusUbeen 
discovered.  Human  life,  which  the  Yankees  like  to  say  is 
"very  cheap  "  among  them,  was  really  so  cheap  that  to  live  in 
the  Black  Hills  was  to  be  on  campaign  every  day  and  every 
hour.  One  soon  adapts  oneself  to  conditions  that  appear  so 
extraordinary.  It  is  surprising  how  soon  one  becomes  accus 
tomed  to  the  thought  of  a  violent  death.  It  is  the  other  death 
—  by  illness  —  with  which  the  imagination  can  never  recon 
cile  itself,  at  least  mine  cannot. 

As  for  Yorkey  Bob,  he  no  doubt  thought  differently  from 
me  on  this  subject,  for  he  took  great  care,  after  the  proof  of 
address  given  by  Herbert,  to  keep  clear  of  the  two  tenderfeet 
from  Europe.  It  was  written  that  he  should  be  killed,  but  in 
a  different  manner.  He  again  stole  so  many  cattle  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Custer  City  and  near  us,  that  the  cowboys 
determined  to  rid  the  town  of  so  dangerous  a  character.  One 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  257 

evening,  when  he  was  quietly  drinking  in  Miller's  bar-room,  a 
treacherous  cowboy  lassoed  him  from  behind,  and  threw  the 
end  of  the  cord  to  a  horseman  who  was  waiting  outside.  The 
latter  set  off  at  full  speed,  and  Bob  was  strangled  in  a  few 
seconds.  He  had  instinctively  seized  his  left  revolver  (he 
carried  one  on  each  side),  and  through  all  the  frightful  con 
sciousness  of  that  mad  flight  across  the  plain  his  fingers  never 
loosed  their  hold.  It  was  necessary  to  break  them  to  get  the 
weapon  from  him.  We  happened  by  accident  to  be  pres 
ent  at  this  last  episode  of  our  enemy's  death.  I  cannot 
better  explain  to  you  the  metamorphosis  which  this  first  awful 
year  had  wrought  in  us  than  by  telling  you  that  we  remained 
indifferent  to  this  summary  execution. 

Bob  was  regretted  by  one  person  only,  a  woman  thief  who 
kept  a  hotel  at  Custer  City,  and  whose  lover  he  was.  This 
creature  had  a  dexterity  with  the  rifle  of  quite  another  sort 
than  that  of  Herbert.  I  have  seen  her,  not  once  but  ten 
times,  pierce  a  gourd  at  a  hundred  paces,  sending  her  ball 
through  a  hole  already  prepared  for  the  cork,  without  even 
grazing  its  edges.  In  every  room  of  her  hotel  you  might  see 
the  following  inscription,  written  up  with  her  own  hand  in 
enormous  red  letters :  — 

"Don't  lie  on  the  bed  with  your  boots  on.  Dorft  spit  on  the 
blankets.  Be  a  man." 

She  had  committed  many  murders,  and  with  her  man's 
clothes  and  her  continual  oaths  she  was  a  fit  companion  for 
Bob,  whom  she  would  certainly  have  avenged  if  she  had  known 
his  assassins.  But  enterprises  of  this  nature  were  always  carried 
on  with  masked  or  muffled  faces,  as  I  have  already  said  with 
regard  to  train  robberies.  For  that  matter,  you  can  learn  as 
much  from  the  newspaper  reports.  This  summary  justice  was 
more  potent  than  legal  justice  as  we  afterward  knew  it,  with 
its  judges  and  lawyers,  costing  much  more  than  executive 
committees  such  as  the  one  which  rid  us  of  Yorkey  Bob. 
s 


258  OUTRE-MER 

And  take  it  all  in  all,  the  second  sort  of  justice  was  much 
less  just. 

After  this  new  experience,  we  resolved  to  live  more  closely 
on  our  ranch.  No  longer  going  into  the  towns  but  by  way  of 
exception  at  long  intervals,  we  at  last  had  no  other  society  than 
that  of  cowboys,  "grangers,"  and  miners.  Into  these  three 
classes  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  prairie  are  distributed.  All 
three  are  alike  in  their  aversion  for  civilized  life,  their  energy 
in  enterprise,  and  their  familiarity  with  danger.  Their  am 
bitions  differ  so  far  as  to  make  them  at  times  enemies.  Each 
class  has  its  heroes,  whose  story  is  continually  told  with  ever 
new  complications.  Buffalo  Bill  is  the  hero  of  the  cowboys, 
Mackay  of  the  miners,  Lincoln  of  the  grangers,  because  of  his 
early  life.  These  classes  form  the  vanguard  of  America,  between 
the  ever-mounting  tide  of  immigration  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  last  redskins  on  the  other.  Or,  rather,  they  did  form  it 
in  the  recent  and  yet  remote  period  of  which  I  speak.  For 
every  year  the  Indians  draw  further  back  and  disappear,  the 
waste  territories  become  more  populous.  In  half  a  century,  if 
I  live  so  long,  I  shall  certainly  see  immense  cities  occupying 
the  prairie  which  I  have  known  so  vast  and  so  free. 

The  proper  domain  of  the  great  ranches  is  still  at  the  present 
time  limited  only  by  the  boundaries  of  the  Indian  Reserva 
tions.  The  "Home-ranch,"  with  its  wooden  houses  and  its 
stables  of  earth,  is  built  near  a  spring.  A  score  of  worthy  vaga 
bonds  live  there  under  the  auth.ority  of  a  chief,  a  "  foreman," 
who  is  naturally  the  strongest  and  most  clever  of  them  all  — 
I  do  not  say  the  most  courageous.  They  are  all  equal  in 
degree,  or  they  would  not  be  worthy  of  being  cowboys.  Fifty 
thousand  horses,  cows,  and  bullocks  wander  free  over  Uncle 
Sam's  pasturage,  and  these  boys  pass  the  year  in  counting, 
marking,  and  despatching  them  by  rail  to  Chicago. 

It  is  not  an  easy  task  to  conduct  a  drove  of  three  or  four 
thousand  beasts  across  the  prairie.  A  certain  number  of  horse- 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  259 

men  precede  the  drove,  others  keep  watch  on  the  flanks,  others 
gather  in  the  stragglers.  They  must  keep  away  from  the  rail 
roads,  or  an  almost  uncontrollable  panic  may  set  in.  Returning 
from  Colorado,  whence  I  was  bringing  three  hundred  and  fifty 
horses,  it  happened  that  I  came  upon  a  road  just  as  a  train  was 
passing.  My  horses  had  never  seen  a  locomotive.  A  terror 
seized  them,  scattering  them  in  all  directions,  in  a  circumfer 
ence  of  a  hundred  miles.  It  took  me  fifty-five  days  to  get  them 
together  again.  At  another  time  a  storm  came  up,  one  of  those 
prairie  tempests,  like  a  cyclone.  The  enormous  living  mass  of 
animals  was  driven  into  a  single  group,  around  which  the  cow 
boys  galloped  like  a  whirlwind.  It  was  necessary  to  keep  the 
animals  in  this  circle,  literally  distracted  as  they  were  by  the 
thunder  and  lightning.  We  succeeded  by  dint  of  discharging 
revolvers  by  the  dozen  over  any  head  that  should  be  uplifted. 
Had  the  rotary  movement  been  checked,  the  enormous  herd 
would  have  broken  through  on  one  side,  and,  like  the  wild  bisons 
of  a  former  day,  they  would  have  trampled  men  and  horses 
under  foot  like  so  much  chaff. 

Such  an  occupation  in  such  surroundings  requires  men  of 
invincible  energy,  ready  for  anything.  I  may  add  that  the  com 
position  of  a  ranch-gang  resembles  nothing  more  than  that  of  a 
battalion  of  the  foreign  Legion  of  France.  The  refuse  of  the 
civilized  world  naturally  finds  refuge  in  it.  At  Lance-Head  we 
had  a  German  cook,  one  Italian  and  two  French  cowboys,  and 
among  Americans  such  unclassed  men  as  Billy,  the  son  of  a 
Chicago  pastor.  He  made  us  laugh  till  we  cried,  one  evening, 
with  stories  of  his  youth,  entirely  passed  in  one  of  those  mixed 
schools  which  have  become  the  object  of  serious  study  by  foreign 
authors  who  come  to  write  up  the  country.  I  wish  that  one  of 
those  grave  article- makers  might  have  heard  Billy  describe  the 
drawing  class,  and  his  girl  classmates,  busy  with  models  of  the 
principal  masculine  schools,  while  he  devoted  himself  by  prefer 
ence  to  feminine  anatomy. 


260  OUTRE-MER 

Among  us  were  enigmatical  personages  who  never  spoke  of 
their  past,  —  for  example,  another  Frenchman,  whose  real  name 
I  do  not  know  to  this  day.  He  called  himself  Jean  Bernard. 
He  was  the  most  dextrous  lasso- thrower  on  the  prairie,  and  he 
had  a  real  passion,  almost  a  mania,  for  danger.  One  day,  to 
make  sure  of  not  being  thrown  by  an  unbroken  horse,  he  fas 
tened  the  reins  to  his  wrists  by  slip  knots,  and  set  off  at  full 
speed.  Both  his  arms  were  broken  in  two  places,  and  he  would 
still  have  hung  on  if  Herbert  had  not  stopped  the  horse  with  a 
ball  in  the  chest. 

I  never  knew,  either,  the  name  of  a  Dutchman  who  went  by 
the  single  name  of  Frank.  One  evening,  being  drunk  on  whiskey 
in  a  small  Western  town,  he  took  it  into  his  head  to  drive  a  score 
of  travellers  out  of  the  hotel  at  the  muzzle  of  his  revolver ;  then 
he  barricaded  himself  in  the  house  and  sustained  a  regular 
siege.  The  thermometer  was  twenty  degrees  below  zero,  so, 
having  kept  on  drinking  to  keep  himself  warm,  he  ended 
by  tumbling  down  behind  the  door  like  a  slaughtered  beast. 
Thus  ended  his  desperate  prank,  without  the  cost  of  a  drop  of 
blood.  It  would  have  cost  Frank  dear  if  he  had  not  been  the 
best  fellow  in  the  world  when  sober,  and  particularly  the  inti 
mate  friend  of  another  personage  who  also  enjoyed  legendary 
authority,  the  Count  of  La  Chausse"e  Jaucourt.  I  one  day  met 
this  Belgian  gentleman,  who  had  long  been  lost  to  the  sight  of 
his  family,  in  the  depths  of  the  Indian  Reservation.  He  was  on 
horseback,  escorted  by  his  two  wives,  two  veritable  "  squaws," 
who,  like  him,  had  their  guns  on  their  shoulders.  He  accosted 
me  with  an  expression  of  vanity,  singular  indeed  under  the 
circumstances. 

"  You  are  the  Frenchman  of  Lance-Head.  I  am  the  Count 
of  La  Chausse"e  Jaucourt,  bachelor  of  letters  and  of  science." 

He  looked  like  a  highwayman,  and  I  took  good  care  not  to 
betray  the  least  surprise.  All  these  trappers  are  infallible 
shots.  But  the  apparition  of  this  bachelor  of  letters  between 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  261 

these  two  savage  women,  dressed  in  skins  and  with  face  tanned 
as  yellow  as  those  of  his  companions,  long  stayed  in  my  memory. 
"Shall  I  ever  come  to  that?"  I  thought,  and  such  a  singular 
result  of  my  Western  adventure  appeared  to  me  neither  impos 
sible  nor  to  be  dreaded,  so  much  was  I  daily  more  and  more 
overcome,  saturated,  intoxicated,  with  the  charm  of  this  free, 
primitive  life.  And  I  answered  myself  gayly,  "Why  not?" 

Yes,  a  charm  !  Even  now  it  is  the  only  word  —  taking  it  in 
its  original  sense  —  that  I  can  find  to  express  the  sort  of 
witchery  which  this  existence  exerted  over  me.  Through  all 
the  years  it  still  exerts  it.  When  I  try  to  distinguish  the 
reasons  of  this  all-powerful  attraction  I  find,  first,  —  a  singular 
enough  feeling  in  a  country  where  revolvers  go  off  of  them 
selves, —  that  I  have  never  lived  through  days  when  I  less 
feared  the  future.  I  knew  then  a  sort  of  serenity,  I  might 
almost  say,  an  incomparable  security.  I  was  fully  conscious 
of  my  courage  and  my  strength.  I  knew  that  my  cowboys 
were  as  faithful  as  mamelukes.  These  desperadoes  for  the 
most  part  found  in  themselves  —  once  they  were  free  of  civili 
zation  and  of  their  past  —  a  profound  strength  of  personal 
honor. 

Did  a  rancher  send  me  word  by  post,  according  to  custom, 
that  such  or  such  a  mare  had  been  seen  two  hundred  miles 
from  Lance-Head,  I  had  only  to  summon  Frank,  for  example, 
and  beg  him  —  we  never  give  orders  in  the  West  —  to  hunt  up 
the  strayed  animal.  He  would  assure  me  that  he  would  find  it, 
and  I  felt  no  further  anxiety.  He  would  set  out  with  three  sad 
dle  horses,  his  waterproof  blanket,  and  his  six-shooter.  I  was 
sure  of  seeing  him  reappear  one  or  two  months  later,  and  the 
mare  with  him.  He  had  given  me  his  word.  As  to  where  he 
had  slept  or  how  he  had  lived  all  this  time,  I  never  so  much  as 
thought  of  asking. 

With  men  of  this  calibre  I  lost  the  idea  of  the  impossible. 
I  had  lost  it  as  far  as  I  was  myself  concerned,  so  much  did  my 


262  OUTRE-MER 

whole  being  superabound  with  youthful  fire,  fed  by  the  open 
air  and  by  complete  purity.  The  habits  of  this  life  were  vio 
lent  even  to  tragedy,  and  severe  even  to  ferocity.  But  they 
were  not  corrupt.  I  found  a  sort  of  interior  poetry  growing 
within  me,  as  I  went  about  my  solitary  rides,  poetry  made 
entirely  from  a  deep  communion  with  nature,  and  untranslat 
able  into  words.  I  became  animalized  with  the  cattle,  or  they 
became  humanized  with  me,  as  you  prefer.  I  understood  now 
the  language  of  horses,  who  talk  with  their  ears  and  their 
nostrils ;  of  the  cows,  who  speak  with  their  eyes,  their  fore 
heads,  and,  above  all,  their  tails ;  of  the  dogs,  who  speak  with 
their  whole  body,  and  whose  thought  changes  so  rapidly  that 
one  can  hardly  follow  it.  I  carried  on  real  dialogues  of  signs 
with  these  creatures,  once  mute  to  me.  I  carried  on  a  still 
more  sublime  and  intimate  dialogue  with  the  great  Being  who 
is  above  all  things  and  creatures.  When,  at  sunset,  seated  in 
the  saddle  and  about  to  set  forth,  I  looked  over  the  prairie,  its 
billows  stretching  away  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  like  a 
motionless  sea  under  a  quiet  breeze,  I  felt  a  sacred  intoxica 
tion,  an  ecstatic  ravishment  that  I  was  alive,  that  I  felt  myself 
strong,  that  I  had  within  me  this  horizon  of  light  and  solitude. 
Almost  involuntarily  the  prayer  would  break  from  my  lips, 
"Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven."  I  would  thank  God  for 
the  blessed  gift  of  life,  for  the  beauty  of  his  visible  work,  for 
the  favors  of  my  lot,  with  a  thrill  of  my  whole  soul  such  as  1 
had  never  known  before  and  have  never  known  since. 

After  what  I  have  lately  told  you  I  should  stultify  myself  in 
claiming  that  such  effusions  were  general  among  the  coarse 
companions  among  whom  I  had  been  thrown.  Nevertheless, 
they  all  in  their  own  way  felt  this  presence  of  God,  which  is 
nearest,  it  seems,  in  the  midst  of  virgin  nature.  Whence 
comes  that  sort  of  elevation  of  heart  that  continually  appears  in 
the  better  ones  among  them,  their  fidelity  to  a  promise,  their 
firm  friendship,  their  virtues  of  endurance  and  loyalty,  if  not 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  263 

from  an  influence  like  that  to  which  we  more  consciously 
yield  ?  In  any  case,  this  was  my  way  of  feeling,  and  I  should 
not  have  given  a  true  notion  of  my  life  in  those  days  if  I  had 
not  reported  these  emotions  as  well  as  all  the  rest. 

When  you  have  galloped  for  months  and  months  over  the 

prairie,  your  free  domain,  the  day  comes  when,  passing  near  a 

well-known  spring,  you  observe  a  disturbance  of  the  soil  not 

tiiere  when  last  you  saw  it.     Near  it  you  see  the  framework  of 

a  covered  wagon.     A  plough,  a  few  instruments  of  cultivation, 

and  one  or  two  lean  jades   picketed   near  by  attest  that  an 

emigrant  has  arrived  with  his  meagre  possessions.     You  urge 

your  horse  in  that  direction,  and  in  response  to  your  vigorous 

"  hellos  "  you  see  a  blanket  thrown  back  that  covered  a  hole 

dug  in  the  ground.     A  man's  head  emerges,  and  behind  him 

the  heads  of  children,  with  the  timid  and  weary  face  of  the 

mother  in  the  background.     It  is  a  "  granger."     He  must  have 

come  this  way  on  horseback  last  autumn.     The  place  pleased 

him.     He  went  back  East  for  his  family  and  his  goods,  and 

here  he  is.     This  hole  in  the  ground,  twelve  feet  by  fifteen, 

will  shelter  them  all  till  he  gets  his  log-house  built. 

"  Hello,  stranger  !  "  he  says,  "where  are  you  from?  " 

"  Where  are  you  from,  my  friend?    You  are  the  stranger  !  " 

"  I  came  from  Nebraska; —  there  are  too  many  there  to  please 

me.     I  shall  be  better  off  here." 

The  cowboy  shrugs  his  shoulders.  One  granger  is  nothing. 
But  to-morrow  there  will  be  ten,  and  the  day  after  a  hundred, 
—  in  a  year  thousands.  However,  he  dismounts  from  his 
horse,  and  the  two  men  begin  to  talk,  coldly  at  first,  then  in 
more  friendly  fashion.  The  cowboy  tells  the  other  where  the 
best  hunting-grounds  are.  Both  of  them,  squatted  on  the 
ground,  are  busily  whittling  bits  of  wood.  The  woman  remains 
in  her  hole. 

How  many  of  these  human  mole-hills  have  I  seen  thrown  up 
on  the  prairie  !  These  hardy  pioneers  of  the  vanguard  never 


264  OUTRE-MER 

come  from  Europe ;  they  are  Americans  of  the  United  States 
or  Canada,  whom  European  immigration  has  pushed  toward  the 
free  West.  Half  farmers  and  half  hunters,  lean  and  taciturn, 
bronzed  as  redskins,  and  hardly  more  civilized,  they  are  flee 
ing  from  civilized  life,  from  cities  and  factories.  They  precede 
the  armies  of  woodsmen,  and  hardly  interfere  with  the  cattle- 
breeders.  Only  a  day  comes  when  others  follow  their  example. 
The  best  pasturages  are  taken  up.  Fences  are  built  every 
where,  on  which  the  ranch  horses  wound  themselves.  These 
people  take  possession  of  all  the  springs.  It  is  not  rare  to  see 
in  the  spring  their  cows  with  five  or  six  calves  —  a  wealth  not 
surprising  when  they  live  near  a  ranch  where  there  are  five 
thousand  head  of  cattle.  In  fact,  they  are  not  at  all  bashful  to 
make  the  most  of  their  powerful  neighbor  in  all  sorts  of  ways. 
So  much  so  that  the  foreman  one  day  decrees  their  expulsion. 
Sometimes  his  cowboys  resort  to  threats,  sometimes  to  fire. 
Most  generally  they  simply  drive  the  granger's  cattle  off  a 
hundred  miles  in  the  night. 

Next  morning  the  poor  wretch  wakes  up  and  finds  himself 
ruined.  He  understands  the  situation,  and  makes  up  his 
mind  to  depart.  Or  else  he  sets  off  to  look  for  his  cattle, — 
an  endless  search.  The  process,  perhaps,  appears  somewhat 
summary,  but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Old  Testament 
is  the  model  of  law  in  the  West,  and  newcomers  must  submit 
to  it.  Besides,  when  it  is  a  case  of  life  or  death  for  the  ranch, 
it  is  a  case  of  legitimate  defence,  in  which  measures  of  this 
sort  are  permitted.  At  least  so  it  seemed  to  me  when  I  was 
there.  In  fact,  as  soon  as  the  number  of  arrivals  becomes 
considerable,  the  ranch  has  nothing  for  it  but  to  give  up  and 
move  nearer  to  the  Rocky  Mountains.  It  has  played  its 
part  of  vanguard  and  must  begin  over  again,  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  grangers,  and  as  near  as  possible  to  the  Indians. 

As  for  the  Indian,  he  is  the  cowboy's  enemy  only  when  the 
war  hatchet  is  dug  up.  This  came  near  being  the  case  a  few 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  265 

months  after  our  arrival.  The  foreman  of  one  of  the  ranches 
had  sown  the  prairie  with  quarters  of  venison  filled  with 
strychnine,  to  poison  the  coyotes.  Two  Sioux  ate  one  of 
them,  and  died  in  frightful  convulsions.  Happily,  the  fore 
man  was  the  friend  of  Sitting  Bull,  the  hero  of  the  massacre 
of  General  Custer  and  his  cavalry  regiment.  The  chief  kept 
his  tribe  from  rising.  They  used  to  be  very  useful  neighbors 
to  us  at  the  time  when  the  county  tax  was  levied.  We  would 
drive  three-quarters  of  our  cattle  into  the  Reservation,  and 
could  then,  in  all  honor,  declare  only  a  very  small  number  of 
animals. 

I  shall  later  explain  to  you  how  this  apparently  unhandsome 
conduct  was  only  a  too  legitimate  way  of  escaping  legalized 
robbery.  The  Indians  obligingly  lent  themselves  to  this 
stratagem,  having  themselves  much  to  surfer  from  the  thefts  of 
government  agents.  And  besides,  their  dread  is  not  the  free 
cavalier,  who  lives  on  the  prairie  as  they  do,  but  the  colonist 
and  the  engineer.  I  knew  Sitting  Bull  well,  myself,  who,  by 
the  way,  having  given  himself  up,  received  a  house  from  the 
United  States.  He  always  slept  before  the  door,  outside,  and 
had  never  slept  under  a  roof.  I  happened  to  be  with  him, 
on  a  hill,  the  first  time  the  whistle  of  a  locomotive  resounded 
among  the  echoes  of  the  Black  Hills.  He  looked  long  at  the 
strange  machine,  then  he  squatted  upon  the  ground,  his  head 
in  his  hands.  Two  hours  afterward,  coming  back  to  the 
place,  I  found  him  in  the  same  posture. 

"Sitting  Bull  is  old,"  was  his  sole  reply  to  my  questions. 
"He  would  be  with  his  fathers,  on  the  other  side  of  death." 

It  was  impossible  for  me  to  get  another  word  from  him  that 
night.  Did  he  divine  that  these  two  rails,  crossing  the  prairie 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  must  bring  to  his  tribe,  in  this 
last  remote  refuge  of  their  independence,  civilization,  and  in 
its  train  a  certain  end?  I  think  so. 

He  was  a  great  chief,  and  his  wish  was  not  long  delayed. 


266  OUTRE-MER 

He  was  killed  in  the  uprising  of  1891,  and  I  wish  him  all 
peace  "on  the  other  side  of  death."  When  I  think  of  the 
Indians  I  knew  in  those  days,  his  gaunt  face,  with  its  long 
jaw,  comes  first  before  me,  and  that  of  a  young  woman,  a 
Utah,  whom  I  met  with  her  husband  in  the  outskirts  of  Salt 
Lake  City.  They  asked  me  for  tobacco,  and  devoured  my 
cigarettes,  wrappers  and  all.  The  brave,  displeased  with  his 
wife,  was  proposing  to  kill  her  in  some  retired  spot.  In  fact, 
she  never  reappeared.  Although  I  did  not  then  suspect  the 
Ute's  design,  I  have  always  reproached  myself  for  not  having 
continued  my  explorations  in  their  company,  either  by  good 
will  or  by  force.  The  thought  of  it  did  cross  my  mind  in  a 
sort  of  presentiment.  I  should  doubtless  have  saved  the  life 
of  that  poor  child.  Her  sad  face,  with  its  great,  gentle  eyes, 
resigned  in  advance,  has  followed  me  for  years. 

Such  events  are  rare,  as  I  have  already  said,  most  happily 
so.  If  the  rivalries  of  sex  were  there  to  heighten  the  ferocity 
of  the  quarrels  over  play  or  in  drink,  which  strew  the  saloons 
with  corpses,  the  whole  prairie  would  soon  be  depopulated. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  temptation  is  not  rare,  that  of  gold 
or  silver  mines  accidentally  discovered  in  your  neighborhood. 
You  hear  the  news  from  a  chance  passer-by.  You  do  not  be 
lieve  it.  You  remember  having  talked  with  the  man  to  whom 
this  good  luck  has  happened.  He  has  been  prospecting  for 
a  mine  for  years.  You  have  jeered  at  him,  like  others,  and 
here  he  is,  a  millionaire.  Other  like  cases  come  to  your 
mind,  and  you  say :  — 

"Why  should  I  not  try,  too?  Who  knows?  I  might  have 
the  same  luck." 

It  is  the  first  attack  of  gold  fever.  However,  the  work  of 
the  ranch  recalls  you  to  reality.  You  have  horses  and  cattle 
to  sell.  You  must  ride  miles  and  miles.  The  fit  passes  over. 

A  few  weeks  later  your  cowboys  are  talking  around  the  fire, 


THE   LOWER   ORDERS  2o7 

You  listen  to  them.  They  are  talking  of  another  miner,  who 
has  discovered  another  lead.  You  are  seized  again  with  the 
same  desire  to  go  yourself  to  look  for  this  gold  that  surrounds 
you,  hiding  itself  here  and  there  all  about  you,  under  your 
feet,  perhaps. 

After  a  few  such  fits  the  fever  grows  stronger.  Some  day 
you  take  your  revolver,  some  pork  and  flour,  and  set  off  over 
the  rocks,  your  eyes  bent  on  the  ground,  your  mind,  heart, 
will,  bent  on  the  ground,  bound,  dragged,  hypnotized  by  the 
magic  word  which  you  repeat  to  yourself  along  the  wretched 
roads,  under  burning  sun  or  snow,  "  Gold !  gold !  gold  !  " 

It  is  a  contagious  madness  from  which  few  escape.  I  was 
affected  by  it  like  the  others.  I,  in  my  turn,  took  up  the 
prospector's  pack  and  set  out.  One  of  my  cowboys  had  just 
discovered  a  silver  mine,  and  sold  it  for  ten  thousand  dollars. 
On  the  morrow  of  that  sale  I  succumbed !  I  can  see  myself 
now  plunging  into  the  mountain  defiles,  trying,  trying,  contin 
ually  trying,  the  rocks  with  my  eyes,  my  hands,  my  pickaxe. 
Miles  succeeded  to  miles,  and  rocks  to  rocks.  Everything 
disappeared  under  the  mirage  of  gold, —  fatigue  and  appe 
tite,  the  sense  of  duty  to  the  ranch  I  had  left  behind  me,  and 
of  my  dignity  as  man.  To-morrow  I  should  find  it!  To 
morrow,  and  yet  to-morrow !  For  six  days  I  went  on  this  way. 
I  was  "possessed."  On  the  morning  of  the  seventh  day,  as  I 
was  saying  the  prayers  I  had  neglected  during  this  whole  week 
of  possession,  God  in  his  mercy  opened  my  eyes  to  my  wan 
derings.  If  I  speak  of  this  solemnly,  it  is  with  purpose.  I 
have  known,  I  still  know,  minds  of  the  finest,  energies  of 
the  noblest,  lamentably  wasted  in  these  desert  depths,  in  pur 
suit  of  gold,  which  no  disappointment,  no  reasoning,  no  trial, 
can  cure  of  their  hypnotism. 

One  of  these,  Hopkins,  told  me  of  weeks  that  he  had  spent 
among  the  crevices  of  the  rocks,  living  on  cold  pork.  The 
least  smoke  would  have  given  the  alarm  to  Indians,  who  were 


268  OUTRE-MER 

beating  the  prairie  in  all  directions,  searching  for  his  scalp. 
None  the  less,  he  went  right  on  with  his  chimerical  search, 
during  and  after  as  before  this  time.  When  I  became  ac 
quainted  with  him  he  was  opening  a  new  mine.  His  shaft 
had  already  gone  down  thirty  feet. 

"A  very  rich  mine!  There  are  millions  down  there,  mil 
lions  like  those  of  Mackay  in  the  Bonanza.  I  only  need  capi 
tal  to  develop  the  lead.  I  have  written  to  Chicago,  they  will 
come  —  " 

Poor  old  Hopkins !  He  already  saw  his  millions,  touched 
them,  counted  them.  He  was  going  to  be  rich,  rich,  rich! 
He  would  have  giant  machines,  crushing  the  metal  day  and 
night.  What  rapture  overspread  this  thin,  wan  face,  that 
seemed  to  have  taken  on  the  color  of  gold  by  dint  of  dream 
ing  of  it,  worn  and  hollowed  by  privation  and  pain,  with  his 
eyes  of  flame,  the  eyes  of  the  believer  and  the  visionary! 
The  west  wind  blew  harshly  through  the  wretched  hut  whose 
leaky  roof  sheltered  his  dreams.  And  I,  who  for  a  moment 
had  known  the  same  fever,  I  pitied  his  madness,  and  went 
away  softly  not  to  recall  him  to  reality. 

If  miners  do  not  often  discover  mines  like  the  Bonanza, 
they  at  least  wash  out  a  little  gold  dust  in  their  "placers," 
and  if  they  saved  their  earnings  after  the  manner  of  French 
peasants,  they  could  grow  old  in  prosperity.  But  the  West  is 
not  the  country  of  savings-banks  and  small  investments.  It  is 
the  country  of  adventurers,  gamblers,  and  of  the  all  or  noth 
ing.  Gold-seekers  no  sooner  have  a  few  hundreds  of  dollars, 
cowboys  no  sooner  draw  their  wages,  than  they  hasten  to  spend 
their  money  in  the  nearest  town,  a  hundred,  two  hundred 
miles  away. 

As  for  us,  once  a  year  we  went  to  Deadwood  and  treated 
ourselves  to  the  luxury  of  the  one  box  in  the  Gaiety  Theatre. 
One  had  small  comfort  there,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 


THE  LOWER   ORDERS  269 

spectators  in  the  orchestra  applauded  the  fine  passages  by 
firing  pistols  at  the  singular  pictures  of  the  ceiling.  I  had 
already  paid  dear  for  the  knowledge  of  how  easily  a  ball 
may  wander  from  its  aim.  The  box  offered  fascinating  attrac 
tions  to  the  horrible  dancing  girls  imported  from  Chicago, 
who  assassinated  us  with  winks  while  executing  figures  with 
their  legs. 

When  we  had  thrown  a  sufficient  number  of  dollars  to  them 
upon  the  stage,  they  would  come  up,  according  to  custom,  to 
kiss  us  and  ask  for  a  bottle  of  so-called  champagne,  which 
cost  six  dollars  and  was  not  worth  twenty  cents.  Often  a 
facetious  cowboy  would  lasso  them  on  their  way  from  the 
stage  to  our  box,  and  this  would  give  the  public  new  occasion 
for  an  explosion  of  applause,  accompanied  by  a  new  fusilade, 
in  an  atmosphere  so  charged  with  alcohol  that  it  seemed  as 
if  the  matches  with  which  the  audience  lighted  their  pipes 
and  cigars  must  set  the  whole  room  in  a  flame,  like  an  enor 
mous  bowl  of  punch. 

The  miner's  life  oscillates  between  pleasures  of  this  order 
and  a  chain-gang  life  in  the  mines,  —  those  at  least  who  keep 
good  faith  in  their  illuminism.  Others,  more  intelligent  and 
more  cunning,  attain  to  great  fortunes  by  swindling  processes, 
the  ingenuity  of  which  would  fill  volumes.  I  shall  content 
myself  with  relating  the  adventures  of  a  certain  Parker,  who, 
in  1885,  sold  a  mine  for  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  Fris- 
sel  &  Company  —  great  bankers  of  one  of  the  largest  cities 
of  the  West.  Parker  had  sown  his  "placer  claim  "  with  gold 
dust  over  a  stretch  of  two  miles,  having  buried  more  than 
ten  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  dust  in  the  sand. 

Never  did  capital  bring  in  such  interest.  On  the  report  of 
two  experts,  grave  men  who  came  expressly  from  Boston,  the 
mine  thus  "  salted "  was  pronounced  to  be  of  incalculable 
wealth.  Frissel  &  Company  deemed  themselves  fortunate 
to  acquire  such  a  treasure  in  exchange  for  the  two-hundred- 


270  OUTRE-MER 

thousand-dollar  check  which  Parker  demanded.  The  experts, 
with  their  fat  recompense,  returned  to  Boston.  Parker  no 
less  generously  recompensed  the  citizens  whose  testimony  had 
confirmed  the  existence  of  the  placer.  The  more  honest 
among  them  had  been  content  with  holding  their  peace.  "  Let 
him  look  out  for  himself !  "  So  says  every  one  on  the  prairie, 
though  only  two  steps  away  from  a  man  who  is  being  plun 
dered. 

As  Frissel  &  Company  never  made  a  complaint,  it  is 
probable  that  they  are  only  awaiting  an  opportunity  to  sell 
again  this  stream  sown  with  gold,  at  double  or  treble  what 
they  paid  for  it,  to  a  society  which  will  scatter  its  stock, 
greatly  reinforced  by  advertisements,  among  rich  Europeans. 
It  will  all  end  with  a  failure,  in  which  the  weak  will  suffer. 
That  is  the  law  of  life,  as  Americans  conceive  it.  As  to 
Parker,  his  admirable  bluff  gave  him  even  more  prestige  than 
fortune.  He  is  now  one  of  the  most  influential  citizens  of 
Omaha, —  "  so  smart  a  man !  "  —  in  a  fair  way  to  become  sena 
tor.  He  owns  four  entire  blocks  of  houses  in  a  new  city,  and 
has  no  doubt  forgotten  his  own  knavery,  and  also  that  cursed 
Frenchman,  Sheffield,  who  gave  him  a  ball  in  the  thigh  from 
his  Colt,  No.  44,  one  day  when  he  was  pouring  forth  in  public 
all  the  turpitudes  of  Frenchwomen,  which  he  claimed  to  have 
learned  in  Paris.  I  had  aimed  low  expressly,  not  wishing  to 
kill  my  man,  who,  on  his  part,  sent  his  ball  on  a  level  with 
my  ear. 

Three  months  later,  that  pistol-shot  came  near  costing  me 
dear.  Parker,  who  had  lost  sight  of  me  after  our  altercation, 
met  me  one  day  in  Custer  City.  He  immediately  had  me 
arrested  for  assault  and  battery.  The  affair  came  first  before 
the  police  justice,  a  certain  Richardson,  who  happened  to 
be  my  grocer.  I  owed  him  more  than  two  hundred  dollars. 
Besides,  I  had  supported  his  election.  I  was  honorably 
acquitted  by  a  judgment  thus  conceived:  "Seeing  that  the 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  271 

defendant's  feelings  received  a  more  cruel  wound  than  the 
plaintiff's  leg." 

Under  other  circumstances  I  might  have  been  obliged  to 
put  in  the  hands  of  this  same  judge  a  large  sum,  which  he 
would  have  divided  with  Parker;  and  this  possibility  brings 
me  to  speak  of  that  which  rules  all  business  and  hinders  all 
success  in  this  Western  country,  naturally  so  rich  and  free, — 
the  bitter,  implacable  war  between  money  and  the  foreigner, 
particularly  under  two  forms,  which  our  French  habits  lead  us 
to  look  upon  as  protections,  law  and  taxation. 

The  breeding  of  horses  and  cattle  brought  in  my  time  thirty 
per  cent  net  on  the  prairie.  Good  pasturages,  as  deserted  as 
possible,  where,  like  modern  patriarchs,  we  let  our  innu 
merable  flocks  and  herds  increase  and  multiply;  resolute  cow 
boys,  who  never  hesitated  to  hang  a  horse  thief  high  and 
short,  or  to  repulse  grangers  and  Indians  by  force,  —  these 
would  have  brought  us  in  sixty  per  cent  on  our  capital  if  we 
had  not  had  to  reckon  with  these  two  leeches. 

The  tax  upon  capital  forms  the  principal  revenue  of  the 
States.  Declarations  naturally  tend  to  reduce  it,  and  it  would 
be  hard  to  reckon  the  number  of  false  oaths  given  in  the  spring 
of  every  year  in  the  Western  Territories.  A  special  commis 
sion  then  sits,  and  rectifies  at  will  three-quarters  of  these 
declarations.  Its  decisions  are  based  upon  anonymous  accu 
sations,  which  abound  there  as  elsewhere,  and  chiefly  on  the 
political  affiliations  of  the  tax-payers.  If  he  is  a  friend,  his 
declaration  is  at  once  received.  If  an  enemy,  his  estimate  is 
doubled,  tripled,  quadrupled.  Finally,  a  surplus  of  five  to  ten 
per  cent  is  added  to  the  total,  according  to  the  deficit  to  be 
made  up,  which  is  the  same  as  saying,  according  to  the  num 
ber  of  county  treasurers  who  have  succeeded  one  another  in 
office.  What  must  become  of  a  foreigner  who,  being  pledged 
to  no  party,  is  skinned  by  all?  Only  one  ground  of  hope  is 
left  him,  —  the  difficulty  the  assessors  may  find  in  counting  his 


272  OUTRE-MER 

herds.  We  had  at  Lance-Head  an  Arabian  stallion,  who  had 
become  a  real  wild  beast  in  the  midst  of  his  wild  stud.  He 
had  half  killed  an  inoffensive  wayfarer  who  was  crossing  the 
prairie  not  far  from  his  favorite  pasturage.  These  stallions  set 
upon  all  persons  whom  they  do  not  know,  with  the  fore  hoofs 
and  the  teeth.  The  terror  spread  abroad  by  this  animal  saved 
us  from  assessment.  The  assessors  were  forced  to  trust  to  my 
statements. 

Not  to  perjure  myself,  as  I  have  said,  I  sent  my  droves  over 
into  the  Indian  Reservation  at  the  time  of  making  oath,  and  I 
therefore  had  only  a  small  number  of  cattle  to  declare.  Not 
withstanding  this  precaution,  our  taxes  were  rated  so  high  as 
to  amount  to  half  our  profits.  For,  three  times  during  my 
career  of  cowboy,  the  county  treasurer  made  off  with  the  bank, 
so  that  in  the  end  we  had  to  pay  a  nine  per  cent  surplus  to 
balance  the  budget.  Am  I  right  in  affirming  that  false  returns 
became  a  legitimate  defence  in  such  a  case? 

As  may  be  supposed,  the  ranchmen  are  not  behindhand  in 
this  matter.  I  can  still  recall  the  countenance  of  Fyffe,  treasurer 
in  188-,  —  now  in  the  penitentiary,  —  when  the  foreman  of  the 
Anglo-American  Company  solemnly  declared  that,  in  conse 
quence  of  the  rigor  of  the  winter,  he  had  not  a  single  milch 
cow  left.  As  a  fact,  the  company  possessed  over  thirty  thou 
sand  head.  It  must  be  added,  that  the  said  foreman  had 
had  too  many  "  corpse  revivers "  that  morning.  Fyffe  was 
petrified  with  admiration  of  such  audacity.  "  What  pluck  ! " 
he  exclaimed,  and  at  once  accepted  this  astounding  declaration. 
Then  a  large  bonus,  offered  by  a  rival  company,  made  him 
reverse  his  first  decision,  and  with  one  stroke  of  the  pen  he 
raised  the  declaration  twenty  thousand  times.  This  roused  the 
cowboys  to  a  simulated  lynching,  where  he  nearly  left  his  bad 
extortioner's  skin. 

How  can  one  defend  himself  against  persons  of  such  a  state 
of  conscience  ?  To  what  can  one  appeal  ?  To  the  law  ?  Every 


THE   LOWER  ORDERS  273 

little  Western  village  has,  side  by  side  with  its  two  or  three 
generals  and  twenty  or  thirty  colonels,  an  equal  number  of 
lawyers. 

Ah,  these  lawyers  !  The  scourge  of  a  country  that  has  an 
elective  magistracy  !  With  their  feet  in  the  air,  and  their 
cigars  in  their  mouths  from  seven  in  the  morning  till  nine 
at  night,  they  meditate  on  possible  lawsuits.  Not  a  quarrel, 
not  a  difference,  not  a  hasty  word,  but  its  echo  reaches  them, 
and  they  throw  themselves  upon  you  with  offers  of  gratuitous 
services,  with  the  enticing  prospect  of  large  damages.  You 
accept.  The  suit  begins.  Soon  the  confusion  is  such  that  no 
one  understands  anything  about  it.  Then  your  lawyer  informs 
you,  with  a  long  face  and  tearful  eyes,  that  your  suit  is  lost. 
He  tells  you  the  reasons,  which  are  precisely  the  opposite  of 
those  that  he  brought  forward  to  induce  you  to  take  this  step. 
The  better  to  convince  you,  he  takes  you  secretly  to  the  judge, 
who  confirms  the  views  of  the  estimable  lawyer.  However,  a 
compromise  is  possible.  You  subscribe  to  it,  and  leave  this 
hell.  Costs,  two  hundred,  three  hundred,  a  thousand  dollars, 
according  to  your  property.  The  amount  is  most  amicably 
divided  between  the  two  lawyers  and  the  judge.  I  have  seen 
one  of  our  compatriots,  guilty  of  killing  a  robber  who  had  first 
drawn  upon  him,  unable  to  secure  the  most  just  of  acquittals 
except  by  spending  twenty  thousand  dollars  ! 

You  are  indignant,  are  you  not?  I  used  to  grow  indig 
nant  over  this  frightful  absence  of  professional  honor.  It  has 
exceptions,  indeed,  but  very  few;  and  one  finally  becomes 
accustomed  to  it,  as  to  rain  in  autumn  and  snow  in  winter. 
It  is  with  the  magistrates  in  these  small  Western  towns,  as  with 
doctors  and  dentists.  A  few  more  anecdotes  before  I  conclude. 
Herbert  came  home,  one  day,  from  Omaha,  where  he  had  been 
to  have  his  teeth  attended  to,  with  his  mouth  full  of  little  holes 
that  the  operator  had  dug  in  his  teeth,  after  putting  him  under 
gas.  He  suffered  from  them  so  much,  that  he  went  back  and 
T 


274  OUTRE-MER 

had  them  filled  with  gold  at  ten  dollars  a  cavity  !  One  of  my 
cowboys  was  wasting  away  in  consequence  of  a  course  of  treat 
ment  prescribed  by  a  doctor  who  had  diagnosed  a  disease 
of  the  stomach.  He  had  been  told  to  take  daily  a  packet  of 
powders  that  seemed  to  us  suspicious.  We  had  the  powder 
analyzed,  and  found  that  the  only  object  of  this  so-called  remedy 
was  to  prolong  the  sick  man's  malady.  He  had  already  paid 
his  poisoner  a  hundred  dollars  —  two  months'  earnings  ! 

These  moral  blemishes,  and  hundreds  more  that  I  spare  you, 
are  the  inevitable  consequences  of  the  formidable  conflict  of 
energy  and  ambition  carried  on  upon  the  prairie.  I  was  aware 
of  this  necessity  even  when  I  was  suffering  the  most  from  it. 
When  we  found  ourselves  clashing  with  some  more  powerful 
barbarity,  Herbert  and  I  would  remind  one  another  of  a  pic 
turesque  sign  in  which  we  had  seen  the  symbol  of  this  budding 
civilization.  We  had  read  in  a  railway  station  during  a  strike 
of  railway  employees  :  — 

"  Passengers,  this  line  is  boycotted.  You'd  better  buy  an 
insurance  ticket,  as  this  train  will  be  run  by  a  green  engi 
neer." 

Everywhere  on  the  prairie  we  came  upon  tokens  of  the 
"  green  engineer,"  and  I  would  think  of  France,  so  beautiful, 
so  pleasant,  so  complete,  true  land  of  love  even  in  its  faults ; 
and  that  it  needed  only  to  have  left  it  to  appreciate  the  charm 
of  living  there,  the  charm  that  an  American  so  well  expressed 
to  me  one  day  when  I  asked  him  what  had  most  struck  him  in 
Paris. 

"Well,  the  finish  of  it,"  he  replied. 

And  I  have  not  returned  to  that  dear  France,  and  I  do  not 
know  that  I  shall  ever  return  there.  Where  one's  family  is, 
one's  country  is,  and  mine  is  now  in  that  Canadian  city  on  the 
shore  of  that  vast  lake,  stormy  as  a  sea,  where  I  went  to  repair 
the  losses  which  the  last  Indian  insurrection  inflicted  on  the 
poor  ruined  ranch  of  Lance-Head. 


THE  LOWER  ORDERS  275 

And  now  that  I  finish  this  account,  which  I  may  well  call 
posthumous,  since  the  cowboy,  Sheffield,  is  dead  in  his  turn  and 
and  has  given  place  to  Francis  Raymond,  a  feeling  of  home 
sickness  for  the  prairie  comes  over  me.  I  feel  how  deeply  I 
loved  that  desert,  so  sad  yet  so  attractive  when  one  has  passed 
there  years  of  exuberant  life,  revolver  in  hand,  rifle  on  the 
pommel  of  the  saddle.  I  have  my  cowboy  saddle  before  me. 
I  seem  to  hear  the  wind  of  those  nights  that  I  spent  out  of 
doors ;  the  wind  that,  as  in  the  early  days  of  the  world,  spoke 
to  me  so  many  mysterious  words.  I  can  see  the  immensity  of 
the  steppe,  here  and  there  cut  by  canons  where  at  noon  the 
does  hide  with  their  fawns ;  the  quiet  streams  where  the  pumas 
come  to  lie  in  wait  for  the  frail,  delicate  antelopes.  I  feel  my 
horse's  hoofs  rustling  the  tall,  dry  grass  of  Dakota.  The  wind 
brings  me  the  fresh  vegetal  aroma  of  the  sage  brush  of  Wyo 
ming.  The  whole  great  country  lies  outspread  before  me,  wild 
and  dangerous,  but  free ;  a  country  where  I  experienced  that, 
take  it  all  in  all,  life  is  less  painful  there  than  anywhere  else ; 
a  country  of  high  emotions,  where  I  was  so  near  to  nature,  so 
near  to  God !  I  touch  with  trembling  fingers  the  tanned 
leather  of  this  saddle,  and  I  must  needs  conquer  the  insane 
desire  that  takes  me  to  be  seated  in  it  as  formerly,  to  plunge 
my  spur  into  my  brave  horse  as  formerly,  and  to  go  farther, 
always  farther,  westward  —  I,  the  father  of  three  children  ! 


VII 
EDUCATION 

WHEN  one  has  seen  a  certain  civilization  in  some  of  its 
fully  developed  representatives,  and  has  formed  an  idea, 
correct  or  incorrect,  of  its  good  qualities  and  its  defects,  its 
value  and  its  insufficiency,  it  remains  to  test  these  notions  by 
a  counter  experiment,  if  I  may  so  speak.  One  must  try  to 
see  in  the  formative  state  these  individual  men  or  women, 
whom  one  has  already  seen  exercising  their  matured  powers. 
To  put  it  more  simply,  the  indispensable  corollary  of  the 
study  of  the  life  of  a  people  is  the  study  of  the  educational 
processes  of  that  people.  The  nature  of  the  instruction  given 
by  a  country  to  its  youth  is  doubly  instructive;  for  on  the 
one  hand  it  reveals  the  educator's  conception  of  men,  — 
hence  of  the  citizen,  hence  of  the  entire  nation,  —  and  on  the 
other  hand  it  permits  you  if  not  to  foresee,  at  least  to  have  a 
presentiment  of  what  the  future  of  the  nation  will  be,  when 
once  the  children  and  youth  thus  brought  up  shall  become  the 
nation  in  their  turn. 

For  example,  is  it  possible  perfectly  to  understand  England 
without  having  understood  Oxford,  and  the  sort  of  semi 
nary  of  "gentlemen"  established  there  many  centuries  ago? 
You  seat  yourself  on  the  turf  of  New  College,  at  the  foot  of 
the  ancient  ramparts  of  the  city;  in  the  close  of  Wadham, 
near  the  apse  of  the  chapel  built  by  Dame  Dorothea,  whose 
statue  may  still  be  seen,  stiff  and  severe  under  the  folds  of  her 
robe  of  stone;  on  the  edge  of  the  pool  of  Worcester,  where 
De  Quincey  dreamed;  in  the  grandly  quiet  park  of  St.  John's. 

276 


EDUCATION  277 

Only  to  see  the  young  barbarians,  as  Matthew  Arnold  called 
them,  playing  tennis  in  the  beautiful  setting  which  owes 
everything  to  the  dead,  only  to  follow  them,  as  in  their  flannel 
suits  they  seat  themselves  in  a  canoe  and  glide  along  the 
venerable  walls  of  these  ancient  cloisters;  or  on  horseback, 
trotting  beside  the  grassy  graveyards  scattered  everywhere  in 
this  city,  —  all  the  future  of  this  youth  is  unveiled  to  you. 
The  boy  who  has  been  in  such  surroundings  during  his  im 
pressionable  years  must  be,  he  cannot  but  be,  just  what  in 
fact  nine  out  of  ten  Englishmen  are :  healthy  and  traditional, 
capable  of  all  endurance,  of  all  physical  daring,  and  deeply, 
thoroughly  conservative,  even  when  he  believes  himself  to  be 
a  radical;  respectful  of  the  past  in  his  most  intense  ardor  for 
individual  action,  because  he  has  felt  it  too  deeply,  too  much 
realized  its  benefits,  to  be  anything  else. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  visit  a  French  Lycee  with  its 
barrack-like  buildings,  its  narrow,  hemmed-in  playgrounds, 
the  promiscuity  of  its  dormitories^  the  bare  ugliness  of  its 
studios  and  class-rooms.  What  more  is  needed  to  show  you 
that  the  young  men  there  brought  up  must  'be  physically  im 
poverished,  nervously  overstrained,  robbed  of  joy  and  spon 
taneity.  Discipline,  too  little  individualized  to  be  intelligent, 
must  inevitably  either  cow  or  irritate  him.  He  comes  forth 
from  it  either  a  functionary  or  a  refractory,  crushed  or  revolted, 
nearly  resembling  the  man  careful  only  of  his  own  interests 
and  the  anarchist,  two  equally  baleful  types  of  the  civilized 
man,  wasting  himself  either  in  feeble  platitudes  or  in  destruc 
tive  insanity.  Such  is  the  fatal  end  of  a  system  of  culture 
apprehended  as  the  reverse  of  nature  and  tradition,  first  by 
the  men  of  the  Convention  and  then  by  the  Emperor,  the  most 
ill-omened  of  all  their  ill-starred  works,  most  calculated  to 
dry  up,  at  its  source,  the  energy  and  virtue  of  our  middle 
class.  Here,  as  everywhere,  education  explains  history, 
because  it  explains  customs. 


278  OUTRE-MER 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  grasp  the  influence  of  a  whole  social 
system  upon  the  schools,  and  again  of  the  schools  upon  the 
social  system.  In  the  United  States,  in  particular,  the  very 
character  of  the  nation  makes  it  almost  impossible  to  define 
its  system  of  education,  spread  as  it  is  over  an  immense 
extent  of  country  and  absolutely  without  central  direction. 
The  power  of  states,  of  cities,  especially  of  individuals,  to 
initiate  action  conspires  incessantly  to  modify  the  innumer 
able  centres  of  instruction  which  have  spontaneously  blos 
somed  out  upon  this  soil  where  social  forces  seem  to  have 
a  plasticity  very  like  the  plasticity  of  natural  forces  in  the 
youth  of  the  planet.  The  chances  are  great  that  each  educa 
tional  building  will  be  constructed  on  a  different  plan,  for  each 
educator  is  apparently  a  man  with  his  own  ideas,  and  each 
pupil  even  is  an  elementary  personality. 

I  remember  when  I  was  in  Newport  being  entirely  non 
plussed  by  the  question  of  a  negro  who  waited  upon  me  in  the 
hotel,  a  sort  of  black  giant  whom  up  to  that  time  I  had  ad 
mired  solely  for  his  dexterity  in  carrying  in  the  flat  of  his 
hand  a  tray  loaded  with  six  or  seven  entire  dinners. 

"Is  it  true,  sir,"  he  asked  me,  "that  you  are  going  to  write 
a  book  about  America?  " 

"Perhaps,"  I  replied.     "But  why  do  you  ask? " 

"  Because  I  should  much  like  to  have  a  copy  to  read  this 
winter  in  college." 

"The  negroes  are  so  vain,"  said  a  New  Yorker,  to  whom  I 
laughingly  related  this  dialogue.  "  He  wanted  to  make  you 
think  he  knew  how  to  read."  And  he  added,  "Since  you  are 
collecting  anecdotes  about  the  'colored  gentlemen'  don't 

forget  this  one.  The  other  week  Lord  B ,  one  of  the  first 

nobles  of  England,  was  travelling  beyond  Chicago.  At  a  cer 
tain  station  one  of  the  Pullman  car  porters  approached  him 

with  the  words,  'They  tell  me  that  you  are  Lord  B .' 

'Yes/  replied  the  other.  'Would  you  give  me  your  hand?' 


EDUCATION  279 

asked  the  negro.  The  nobleman  thought  this  request  showed 
a  touching  humility.  He  extended  his  hand  to  the  unhappy 
son  of  slavery,  who  perhaps  had  formerly  been  himself  a  slave. 
What  did  the  darkey  do  but  shake  the  nobleman's  hand  with 
the  proud  remark,  'You  know,  Lord  B ,  I  am  an  Ameri 
can  citizen  and  I  propose  to  tell  all  my  fellow-citizens  that 
the  British  aristocracy  is  all  right ! '  " 

My  witty  interlocutor  was  mistaken.  It  was  not  in  bragga 
docio  that  the  waiter  in  the  Newport  hotel  had  spoken  of  his 
college.  I  had  the  proof  of  this  when,  in  the  course  of  the 
winter,  being  in  a  little  Southern  city  in  which  the  newspapers 
had  made  known  my  presence,  I  received  a  letter  which  I 
cannot  refrain  from  setting  down  here  in  all  its  artlessness,  so 
significant  does  it  appear  to  me. 

"  I  write  you  a  few  lines  to  let  you  know  that  I  have  suc 
ceeded  in  entering  college  as  I  hoped  to  do.  I  entered  Janu 
ary  i,  and  am  getting  along  very  nicely  with  my  studies.  My 
wish  was  to  take  the  full,  regular  course,  but  I  am  not  able  to 
do  so  as  I  must  support  myself  while  in  school.  I  must  there 
fore  content  myself  with  the  normal  and  scientific  course.  I 
do  not  precisely  know  what  I  shall  do  next  summer.  I  have 
thought  of  going  back  to  the  hotel  in  Newport,  but  nothing  is 
decided.  I  am  looking  for  a  copy  of  your  book  when  it  is 
finished." 

What  can  be  the  spirit  of  a  college  on  whose  benches  a 
servant,  twenty  years  old  and  more,  may  take  his  place  for  six 
months  in  the  year,  between  two  terms  of  service,  and  the 
fact  not  appear  in  the  least  exceptional?  What  must  be  our 
opinion  of  the  man  himself,  his  demands  of  life,  the  thoughts 
he  exchanges  with  his  fellow-students;  what  of  an  entire 
society  in  which  such  features  are  of  daily  occurrence?  Once 
more  measure  the  abyss  that  separates  the  Old  World  from  the 
New.  And  yet  the  very  exclamation  that  falls  from  a  for 
eigner's  lips  on  meeting  such  incidents  —  "How  American 


280  OUTRE-MER 

that  is!"  is  a  proof  that  he  recognizes  a  certain  character 
common  to  all  the  manifestations  of  this  singular  country, 
however  unlike  they  may  be. 

This  unity  it  is  that  I  would  try  to  discover  in  the  complex 
problem  of  education,  having  special  reference  to  certain 
groups  of  very  clearly  defined  facts.  At  the  advice  of  some 
of  my  friends,  I  have  chosen  the  schools  of  Boston  as  suffi 
ciently  representative  types  of  primary  instruction;  Harvard 
as  representing  universities  for  men  and  Wellesley  those  for 
women;  of  technical  schools,  West  Point,  the  military  acad 
emy,  the  St.  Cyr  of  the  United  States.  The  reason  of  this 
choice  is  easy  to  give.  Massachusetts  has  been  for  many 
years  the  matrix,  so  to  speak,  of  the  figure  from  which  the 
genius  of  America  has  taken  its  moral  and  intellectual  stamp; 
it  is  therefore  probable  that  the  spirit  and  method  of  Ameri 
can  teaching  are  more  visible  there  than  elsewhere.  This  is 
why  the  Boston  schools,  and  the  universities  of  Harvard  and 
Wellesley,  whether  they  are  superior  or  inferior  to  thousands 
of  other  schools  and  hundreds  of  other  universities,  are  doubt 
less  more  striking  and  illustrative  to  a  passing  observer  than 
the  others.  On  the  other  hand,  West  Point  has  this  advan 
tage  over  other  technical  schools,  that  the  human  product, 
such  as  is  there  made,  must  be  pretty  much  the  same  in  all 
parts  of  the  world,  for  everywhere  war  resembles  war  and 
officer  resembles  officer.  The  similarity  of  the  results  to  be 
obtained  permits  us  to  understand  better  the  difference  in 
methods.  These  are,  if  you  like,  four  pretty  strong  meshes 
in  the  vast  tissue  of  instruction  thrown  over  this  whole  great 
country.  Considering  how  they  have  been  woven,  the  reader 
will  be  able  to  judge  of  the  probable  value  of  the  stuff.  If  he 
wants  more  complete  details,  he  will  find  them  in  the  fully 
attested  works  of  M.  de  Varigny,  in  the  acute  observations  of 
the  superior  woman  who  signs  herself  Th.  Bentzon,  and 
finally  in  the  clever  volume  of  M,  Pierre  de  Coubertin,  Les 


EDUCATION  281 

Universites  Transatlantiques.  Upon  West  Point  in  particular, 
Count  Louis  de  Tarenne  has  written  very  interestingly  in  his 
work,  Quatorze  mois  dans  r  Amerique  du  nord,  a  repertory  of 
incomparably  full  and  accurate  facts  concerning  the  United 
States.  I  myself  make  no  claim  of  doing  more  than  set  forth 
here  a  hypothesis  which  fits  in  well  with  very  many  of  the 
facts  so  carefully  collected  by  these  conscientious  and  dis 
tinguished  observers. 

Let  us  try  to  imagine  a  traveller  who  knows  absolutely  noth 
ing  of  America  and  who  lands  in  Boston  with  letters  to  a 
prominent  resident  of  that  city.  It  is  the  time  of  full  activity 
in  this  old  New  England  metropolis,  consequently,  it  is  winter. 
The  Bostonian  comes  to  the  traveller's  hotel  in  a  sleigh  which 
glides  rapidly  over  the  frozen  snow.  His  first  act  is  to  take 
him,  with  justifiable  pride,  to  that  central  park  which  he  calls 
the  Common,  and  which  has  the  peculiarity  little  known  in  the 
United  States  of  dating  from  far  back,  —  from  1636.  Next  our 
man  takes  his  guest  by  a  network  of  streets,  the  crookedness 
of  which  speaks  of  relative  old  age,  to  the  "  Old  State  House," 
the  scene  of  the  Boston  Massacre,  the  museum  where,  side 
by  side  with  a  marvellous  Japanese  collection,  are  some  very 
singular  relics,  —  a  glass  case  full  of  boots  and  shoes,  among 
them  a  pair  of  boots  worn  by  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena.  -  The 
Bostonian  will  not  fail  next  to  show  the  river  Charles,  where, 
it  is  said,  are  seen  the  finest  sunsets  in  America,  —  the  athletic 
club,  with  its  gigantic  swimming  bath  in  the  basement,  fed  by 
running  water,  —  Beacon  Street  with  its  fine  residences,  and 
Music  Hall,  where  more  music  is  given  during  the  season  than 
in  all  the  Conservatories  of  Europe. 

More  than  once  during  these  comings  and  goings  the  trav 
eller  has  questioned  his  guide  as  to  one  or  another  building 
which  has  appeared  to  him  larger,  more  pleasing,  of  newer  and 
more  elaborate  style  than  the  others,  and  every  time  the  Bos- 


282  OUTRE-MER 

tonian  has  told  him  that  it  was  a  school.  Without  considering 
it  a  matter  of  much  importance,  the  traveller  asks  how  many  of 
these  schools  there  are  in  Boston.  He  knows  already  that  they 
are  public  and  free,  for  his  companion  has  made  much  of  these 
two  points,  but  he  finds  it  extraordinary  indeed  to  be  told  that 
there  are  six  hundred  and  seven  of  them.  Upon  this  he  is 
taken  to  the  office  of  the  superintendent  of  this  immense  edu 
cating  machine.  The  gentleman  is  absent  on  one  of  the  tours 
of  inspection  made  necessary  by  his  truly  ministerial  office. 
But  his  secretaries  are  there,  —  women,  of  course, — and  they 
interrupt  their  playing  on  the  type-writer  to  search  the  library 
for  divers  pamphlets  bearing  on  all  sorts  of  educational  prob 
lems  :  studies  of  the  proper  height  of  chairs  and  desks  from  the 
hygienic  point  of  view,  reflections  on  methods  of  teaching, 
statistics  and  criticism  of  courses  and  examinations,  statistical 
tables  of  teachers  and  scholars,  calculations  of  expenses. 

When  the  traveller  on  returning  to  his  hotel,  still  pursued 
by  that  figure  six  hundred  and  seven,  begins  the  reading  of 
these  apparently  dry  reports,  he  finds  it  impossible  to  stop. 
He  is  taken  possession  of  by  them  as  by  a  unique  sort  of 
romance.  They  are,  in  fact,  the  romance  of  a  city,  athirst  to 
know,  hungry  for  culture,  and  which  desires  to  learn  and 
understand  through  all  its  inhabitants,  to  saturate  itself  with 
intelligence.  This  is  one  of  the  American  fevers  —  this  fanati 
cal,  almost  unhealthy  longing  for  knowledge,  but  it  is  only 
a  phase  of  that  grand  and  noble  fever  with  which  this  whole 
country  is  consumed,  crude  as  it  yet  is,  and  chaotic  and  un 
formed;  too  recent,  and  yet  homesick  for  civilization. 

To  measure  accurately  this  effort  after  "more  light"  as  the 
dying  Goethe  said,  you  must  analyze  into  its  component  parts 
that  figure  six  hundred  and  seven.  These  schools  are  sub 
divided  into  six  grades,  in  accordance  with  the  different  ages 
of  the  children,  and  also  with  the  different  courses  of  study. 
First  of  all,  at  the  very  bottom  of  the  ladder,  if  one  may  so 


EDUCATION  283 

speak,  there  are  thirty-six  kindergartens,  attended  by  nineteen 
hundred  and  sixty  children.  Next  come  four  hundred  and 
eighty-one  primary  schools,  with  twenty-five  thousand  pupils; 
fifty-five  so-called  grammar  schools,  with  more  than  thirty 
thousand  pupils;  ten  Latin  or  high  schools,  attended  by  three 
thousand  four  hundred  scholars;  twenty-four  special  schools, 
twenty-two  of  them  held  in  the  evening,  with  an  attendance 
of  five  thousand  five  hundred  students;  and  finally  a  normal 
school,  destined  to  the  maintenance  of  the  members  of  the 
teaching  staff.  This  staff  contains  a  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifteen  men  and  women,  who  hardly  suffice  for  the  immense  ser 
vice  which,  during  the  first  nine  months  of  the  present  school 
year —  1893  —  represented  to  the  city  an  expenditure  of  two 
millions  of  dollars.  Of  seventy-three  thousand  one  hundred 
and  seventy-six  children  or  youth  between  five  and  fifteen 
years,  the  total  number  in  Boston,  fifty-three  thousand  six  hun 
dred  and  thirty-eight  were  at  that  date  receiving,  without  the 
cost  of  a  centime,  an  instruction  that  extends  from  the  first 
rudiments  to  a  culture  which  we  reserve  for  our  middle  class. 

And  the  city  does  not  find  itself  satisfied  with  this  amazing 
result.  Between  1889  and  1892  it  built,  furnished,  equipped, 
and  opened,  at  its  own  expense,  a  new  Latin  school,  four 
grammar  schools,  seven  primary  schools;  bought  land  for 
three  others,  and  spent,  besides  its  ordinary  estimate,  another 
sum  of  two  million  dollars  in  the  work  of  improvement. 
Such  progress  did  not  hinder  the  committee  who  reported 
it  from  providing  for  new  foundations  in  the  year  to  come. 
One  observation  among  many  others  gives  an  idea  of  the 
spirit  with  which  these  indefatigable  propagators  of  knowl 
edge  are  animated.  Speaking  of  the  normal  school,  a  re 
porter  wrote  in  entire  good  faith :  — 

"  It  will  be  understood  how  necessary  is  this  addition  when 
it  is  remembered  that  the  building  is  in  precisely  the  same 
state  that  it  was  in  fifteen  years  ago," 


284  OUTRE-MER 

These  lines  from  an  official  pen  show  better  than  any  com 
mentary  what  the  words  "recent"  and  "old"  signify  on 
American  lips. 

Upon  this  you  close  the  bulky  collection  of  documents. 
Beneath  the  minute  but  indisputable  details  of  these  statistics 
you  have  perceived  a  great  social  fact  which  is  too  much  in 
harmony  with  facts  which  you  have  yourself  observed  not 
to  be  correct;  namely,  the  profound  vitality  of  civic  feeling 
in  the  United  States.  This  prodigality  of  millions  has  no 
other  principle.  It  expresses  the  conviction  felt  by  all  citi 
zens  in  their  inmost  hearts, —  that  the  community  should 
spare  nothing  *  -  furnish  to  all  its  members  the  opportunity  to 
develop  the  gifts  they  received  at  birth.  But  what  commu 
nity?  Certainly  not  America;  the  government  that  sits  in 
Washington  has  nothing  to  do  with  these  expenses.  Not  even 
the  State  to  which  the  city  belongs;  but  the  city  itself,  the 
city  which  these  youth  see  with  their  own  eyes,  which  might 
be  pictured  as  a  being  to  whom  they  are  bound  by  ties  of 
flesh  and  blood.  In  consequence,  these  educational  benefits 
are  not  to  these  youth  an  anonymous  gift,  for  which  they 
know  not  whom  to  thank,  the  studies  they  undertake  are  not 
directed  by  a  remote  superior  council  of  functionaries  whom 
they  will  never  see.  They  see  and  know  not  only  the  admin 
istrators  of  this  great  system  of  municipal  instruction,  but  also 
the  generous  givers,  who,  to  their  public  contributions,  are 
continually  adding  private  gifts.  All  these  direct  influences 
contribute  to  develop  and  exalt  in  them  the  same  civic  feel 
ing  which  impelled  their  elders  to  support  and  aid  in  the 
great  work  of  their  culture,  so  that,  once  rich  and  great,  their 
constant  care  will  be  to  aid  their  younger  brothers  in  their 
turn. 

Here,  as  in  France  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  in  Italy  during 
the  Renascence,  strong  municipal  life  naturally  produces 
strong  municipal  virtues,  and  it  produces  them  in  the  woman 


EDUCATION  285 

as  well  as  in  the  man,  —  a  fact  entirely  in  conformity  with  the 
genius  of  the  country,  with  its  strong  sense  of  equality.  In 
all  this  work  of  the  schools  it  is  curious  to  note  to  what  de 
gree  the  woman  rivals  the  male  citizen  in  spontaneity  and 
generosity.  To  take  only  two  or  three  most  typical  facts;  it 
is  thus  that  in  1884,  a  lady  of  Boston,  Mrs.  Quincy  A.  Shaw, 
submitted  to  the  city  authorities  her  project  of  opening  some 
rooms  for  manual  training  in  the  schools.  Her  thought  was 
to  found  cooking  courses  and  lectures  on  the  care  of  a  house 
and  its  linen  for  the  young  girls  and  for  the  boys  printing, 
cabinet-making,  and  shoe-making.  She  has  spent  a  great  sum 
in  this  work  since  1884;  the  report  tells  i  how  much  —  a 
million  and  a  half  of  dollars. 

Under  the  impulse  of  this  entirely  personal  good  will,  two 
cooking-schools  were  opened  in  1885,  and  received  one  hun 
dred  and  fifty  pupils  apiece,  and  as  Mrs.  Quincy  A.  Shaw 
was  at  this  moment  busy  with  the  kindergarten,  two  other 
Boston  ladies  undertook  to  go  on  with  these  two  experiments, 
"The  first,"  says  the  report,  with  the  pride  of  local  patriot 
ism,  "which  have  been  established  in  America."  In  1886  a 
third  cooking-school  was  opened  under  the  same  conditions. 
The  city  has  since  accepted  the  charge  of  all  of  these,  and 
now  the  women  are  seeking  for  other  enterprises  to  which  to 
devote  their  energies,  time,  and  money.  The  committee 
considered  the  experiment  conclusive,  and  undertook  to  con 
tinue  it  in  the  name  of  the  community  for  reasons  which  are 
worth  citing,  since  they  also  are  stamped  with  that  civism 
which  is  at  once  so  ardent  and  so  sagacious.  After  showing 
all  the  advantages  which  the  art  of  cooking  may  procure  to  the 
poor  girl  as  well  as  to  the  rich,  —  rendering  the  one  capable 
of  making  her  home  more  comfortable,  fitting  the  other  the 
better  to  manage  her  servants,  —  the  report  takes  a  larger  view 
of  the  question,  and,  speaking  of  the  place  of  manual  training 
in  education,  it  concludes :  — 


286  OUTRE-MER 

"This  training  also  serves  to  counteract  one  of  the  greatest 
evils  which  threaten  the  nation:  the  excessive  disparity 
between  the  rich  and  the  poor.  This  disparity  often  results 
from  the  scorn  with  which  many  people  of  means  look  upon 
those  who  work  with  their  hands.  This  is  a  false  conception, 
for  which  there  will  be  no  place  if  all  children  are  brought 
up  to  work  with  tools  under  the  direction  of  teachers  in  work 
ing-clothes,  at  the  side  of  school-fellows  who,  rich  and  poor 
alike,  work  with  the  same  tools.  The  result  of  this  teaching 
will  be  a  higher  citizenship." 

This  higher  citizenship, — the  expression  is  hardly  trans 
latable  so  little  of  the  thing  is  found  in  centralized  countries, 
—  this  impulse  to  love  one's  city  and  make  it  beloved,  this 
pride  in  one's  native  place,  and  this  care  to  make  it  ever 
better,  — all  these  are  the  secret  of  such  generosities  in  educa 
tional  things.  They  sometimes  attain  really  fantastic  propor 
tions.  There  is  a  citizen  of  Illinois  who  made  a  single  gift 
of  six  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  the  University  of  Chicago, 
on  condition  that  others  would  increase  the  sum  to  a  million. 
The  required  four  hundred  thousand  were  subscribed  the  same 
day.  Thus  a  capital  of  five  million  francs  was  paid  down  in 
a  day,  which  the  first  giver  doubled,  for  his  own  share,  —  say 
ten  more  millions  of  francs.  He  desired,  said  a  journalist,  to 
secure  to  his  city  a  superior  "standard"  of  higher  education. 
This  American  expression,  which  might  make  a  companion  to 
the  "record,"  is  also  difficult  to  translate.  The  "standard" 
is  the  value  of  a  manufacturer's  mark,  the  tape  by  which  you 
measure  the  quality  of  the  product.  You  find  there  applied 
to  the  things  of  the  mind,  to  literature  and  science,  that  which 
makes  the  very  basis  of  this  mercantile  Democracy  —  that 
estimate  by  comparison,  which  these  people  still  express  by 
the  verb  "to  beat."  Of  a  hotel  or  a  view,  a  fine  book  or  a 
certain  brand  of  champagne,  of  a  great  artist  and  a  steamboat 
enterprise,  they  say  equally  that  it  "beats  anything  in  the 


EDUCATION  287 

world."  Perhaps  this  self-love,  which  we  think  somewhat 
childish,  is  the  condition  of  the  astounding  vitality  of  the 
local  centres  from  which  comes  the  vitality  of  the  whole  coun 
try.  Shakespeare  somewhere  speaks  of  one  of  those  men  each 
of  whose  thumbs  is  a  man.  America  is  a  country  whose  cities 
are  all  prairies,  a  republic  whose  each  city  is  a  republic,  an 
immense  corps  of  which  each  city  is  a  corps.  This  energy  of 
the  municipal  unit  may  be  known  by  a  thousand  signs.  While 
studying  the  processes  of  instruction,  we  feel  that  we  are 
close  in  touch  with  it. 

Admitting  that  the  school  is  an  entirely  local  creation  based 
upon  the  good  will  of  individuals,  the  methods  of  instruction 
ought  to  be  all  alike  conformed,  not  indeed  to  abstract  and 
conventional  theories  but  to  the  peculiar  needs  of  the  city,  its 
individual  and  encompassing  life.  A  short  tour  of  investiga 
tion  suffices  to  show  the  traveller  that  in  fact  education  is 
minutely  and  systematically  organized  here  with  a  view  to  the 
adaptation  of  the  individual  to  his  surroundings.  The  teachers 
are  both  men  and  women,  but  especially  women.  These  zeal 
ous  creatures  earn  nearly  nine  hundred  dollars  a  year.  Most 
of  them  are  unmarried,  and  though  in  constant  contact  with 
male  teachers  "cases  of  scandal,"  as  they  say  here,  are  ex 
tremely  rare.  These  women  teachers  are,  above  all,  moral 
persons.  Their  sense  of  responsibility  enables  them  to  exert 
an  all-pervading  influence  over  the  children  and  youth  whom 
they  instruct.  Perhaps  we  may  find  here  one  of  the  reasons 
for  the  peculiar  respect  in  which  women  are  held  in  America. 
They  are  a  part  of  the  strongest  and  most  tender  impressions 
of  youth. 

It  is  worth  while  to  see  these  school-mistresses,  most  of  them 
pretty,  teaching  their  classes,  especially  in  the  primary  schools, 
where  girls  and  boys  of  ten  to  twelve  years  sit  side  by  side. 
They  proceed  mainly  by  questions  put  to  the  school  at  large, 
the  pupils  asking  permission  to  reply  by  raising  the  hand. 


288  OUTRE-MER 

The  mistress  chooses  one,  then  asks  another  question,  looking 
up  this  or  that  one  who  is  backward.  It  is  very  simple,  very 
animated,  very  pleasant.  The  great  variety  in  the  exercises, 
none  of  which  lasts  more  than  half  an  hour,  forbids  fatigue. 
In  the  beginners'  classes,  as  also  in  the  grammar  grades,  the 
feature  which  most  strikes  a  middle-class  Frenchman,  of  gram 
mar  school  education,  is  the  constant  use  of  the  concrete  and 
positive  method.  Modelling  in  clay  plays  an  important  part  in 
this  method  of  instruction.  In  almost  every  schoolroom  that 
you  may  visit  you  will  see  a  whole  collection  of  figures  modelled 
by  the  children  of  both  sexes,  who  follow  you  with  curious 
eyes,  —  simple  objects  made  in  the  likeness  of  the  humble  re 
alities  that  surround  them,  a  carrot,  a  loaf  of  bread,  a  biscuit, 
a  butterfly,  a  flower.  Here  are  some  busy  with  a  lesson  in 
which  they  must  draw  and  describe  a  potato  that  lies  before 
them.  Others  are  busy  copying  some  leaves.  They  must 
identify  the  tree  and  give  some  positive  facts  about  it.  Others 
have  just  finished  some  rather  complicated  woodwork,  made 
after  patterns  drawn  with  chalk  upon  the  blackboard ;  pigeon 
holes,  boxes,  pieces  of  carved  wood  that  might  be  adjusted  to 
some  machine.  In  all  these  details  you  recognize  the  same 
principle ;  to  make  the  eye,  the  mind,  and  the  hand  work  to 
gether  ;  to  train  the  child  to  observe,  and  to  regulate  his  thought 
and  actions  in  accordance  with  his  observation. 

After  seeing  these  methods  of  education,  you  understand 
better  certain  peculiarities  of  the  American  mind, —  its  almost 
total  lack  of  abstract  ideas,  and  its  amazing  power  of  recogniz 
ing  reality,  of  manipulating  it  in  the  domain  of  mechanics  as 
well  as  in  that  of  business.  The  aim  is,  to  the  most  remark 
able  degree,  to  confront  these  awakening  minds  constantly, 
indefatigably  with  the /#<:/.  The  exercises  which  they  choose 
are  the  evident  proof  of  this.  Thus  I  have  seen  the  pupils  in 
a  somewhat  advanced  class  occupied  by  way  of  written  exer 
cise,  in  replying  to  a  newspaper  advertisement  for  employees. 


EDUCATION  289 

When  they  are  grown  up,  they  will  have  such  advertisements 
to  draw  up.  These  things  are  facts,  and  this  education  bows 
to  facts.  They  will  need  to  write  letters  relative  to  travelling, 
and  here  is  a  class  of  little  girls  of  twelve  who  have  just  been 
dealing  with  the  subject:  "A  trip  to  Europe." 

I  read  two  of  the  copies  that  the  teacher  is  correcting. 
The  first  is  the  work  of  a  child  who  has  never  been  abroad. 
It  is  a  very  dry  and  meagre  production,  which,  however,  re 
veals  a  minute  effort  after  accuracy.  The  child  names  the 
ship  on  which  she  is  supposed  to  have  made  the  voyage.  She 
mentions  the  day  of  setting  out,  the  length  of  the  voyage,  the 
number  of  miles  made  each  day,  the  name  of  a  hotel  in  Liver 
pool  and  one  in  London.  All  these  details  are  accurate  and 
real.  She  has  heard  relatives  or  friends  mention  them,  and 
she  has  retained  them.  The  little  girl  of  the  second  paper 
has  actually  made  the  journey.  She  had  observed  and  remem 
bered  each  daily  event,  the  incidents,  the  meals,  the  conver 
sation  of  her  mother  and  the  stewardess.  She  had  observed 
the  small  size  of  the  London  houses  and  the  air  of  "refined 
gayety  "  of  Paris.  It  is  all  told  without  effort  and  sometimes 
with  a  good  deal  of  naturalness.  It  seemed  as  if  I  were  trac 
ing  to  its  source  that  talent  for  conscientious  and  truthful 
writing  which  in  America  even  more  than  in  England  has 
produced  an  enormous  amount  of  feminine  literature.  The 
attention  here  is  carefully  directed  to  the  daily  current  of 
events.  Fifteen  or  twenty  years  hence  this  little  girl  will  go 
to  the  poles  or  to  Egypt  and  her  notes  of  travel  will  appear 
in  some  magazine,  if  indeed  she  does  not  undertake  some 
monograph  on  art  or  history,  science  or  literature,  or  if  again 
she  does  not  try  her  hand  at  a  "short  story,"  that  brief  and 
sensational  study  of  life,  in  narrative  form,  which  is  really  the 
summit  of  excellence  in  American  literature. 

Returning  from  these  visits,  you  must  take  up  the  report  of 
the  school  committee,  to  read  it  with  the  picture  before  you 
u 


290  OUTRE-MER 

of  these  boys  and  girls  with  their  spirited,  resolute  faces, 
these  masters  and  mistresses  with  their  lively,  familiar  ways, 
these  light  and  well-ordered  schoolrooms,  these  well-stocked 
laboratories  —  all  this  little  world  of  study  in  which  nothing 
calls  up  the  thought  of  discipline  or  constraint.  You  will 
receive  the  fullest  light  on  the  whole  system  of  instruction  by 
reading  the  part  of  the  report  entitled  "Examination  Papers." 
This  is  a  list  covering  pages  and  pages  of  questions  put  to  the 
pupils  in  written  or  oral  examinations.  There  is  not  one, 
from  the  simplest  to  the  most  difficult,  which  was  not  de 
signed  to  put  the  child's  mind  in  an  atmosphere  of  positive 
action,  to  connect  it  with  facts  by  a  firm  and  sufficient  tie. 
In  the  matter  of  spelling,  for  instance,  the  easiest  dictation 
exercises  contain  facts  of  domestic  life  or  counsels  of  practical 
utility. 

"  While  I  remain  in  the  country  this  summer  my  time  will 
be  occupied  in  active  recreation."  "John,  come  here.  Did 
you  hear  me  quoting  the  old  saying,  'A  stitch  in  time  saves 
nine ' ?  " 

If  the  examination  is  in  composition,  subjects  like  these 
are  given:  — 

"  Wante4 :  a  young  woman  in  a  photographic  gallery.  Must 
have  practical  and  artistic  experience  and  good  references. 
Address,  Room  15,  154  Tremont  Street,  Boston,  Mass.  Write 
the  letter  that  you  would  write  if  you  desired  this  place." 

."  Write  a  letter  to  some  one  you  know  who  has  never  been 
in  this  school.  Describe  the  playground,  the  building,  your 
room." 

"Write  to  a  friend,  giving  advice  as  to  her  health,  telling 
her  the  things  you  have  learned  about  the  care  of  the  body." 

If  it  is  geography,  this  is  how  they  prepare  children  for 
their  future  travels :  — 

"Sail  from  Cape  Ann  to  Cork,  with  a  cargo.  What  goods 
would  you  take  and  what  would  you  bring  back?  " 


EDUCATION  291 

"  Make  an  excursion  from  San  Francisco  to  Paris.  Describe 
the  route.  What  articles  would  you  bring  back?  " 

Then  follow  an  infinite  number  of  questions  upon  climates 
and  products,  both  vegetable  and  mineral,  and  the  division 
of  industries. 

If  the  study  is  mathematics,  mental  arithmetic  will  occupy 
the  first  place,  of  course,  and  all  the  problems  will  refer  to 
processes  of  buying  and  selling. 

If  it  is  history,  all  the  questions  turn  upon  the  annals  of  the 
great  Republic,  and  especially  on  New  England. 

"  When  and  by  whom  was  Boston  founded  ?  Describe  the 
Tree  of  Liberty,  the  Boston  Massacre,  the  Boston  Tea-party. 
Describe  a  New  England  village,  a  Sunday  morning  in 
colonial  times.  Give  an  account  of  the  landing  in  Massa 
chusetts  Bay  and  a  short  description  of  the  leaders  of  the 
first  colony." 

Evidently  the  pupil  who  is  prepared  to  reply  on  all  these 
points  has  been  educated  with  a  view  to  becoming  a  business 
man  in  a  democracy  and  if  possible,  in  a  special  city  of  the 
democracy.  The  citizens  who  manage  this  vast  organization 
for  civic  instruction  are  finding,  nevertheless,  that  in  these 
programmes  there  is  too  little  room  for  the  workingman.  The 
report  sketches  a  project  for  a  new  school  of  mechanical  arts, 
more  complete  than  any  other.  It  will  be  called  —  no  doubt 
by  this  time  it  is  already  called  —  "The  Mechanical  High 
School."  The  prospectus  is  summed  up  in  these  words,  which 
I  transcribe  textually :  — 

"For  the  first  time  in  Boston  the  child  who  is  to  enter 
industrial  life  will  have,  at  the  public  expense,  the  same 
opportunities  for  preparation  which  have  long  been  given  to 
those  who  are  preparing  for  business  or  professional  life." 

Having  reached  this  point,  it  seems  to  me  that  these  people 
must  have  attained  their  ideal,  which  can  be  expressed  in  one 
word:  the  complete  identification  of  education  and  life. 


292  OUTRE-MER 

You  find  the  same  ideal  on  your  first  view  of  a  university. 
I  have  taken  Harvard  for  the  type,  precisely  because,  being 
the  oldest,  it  seems  best  to  show  the  persistent  tendency  of  the 
American  mind.  In  the  first  place,  its  history  alone  shows 
how  essential  a  characteristic  of  this  mind  is  faith  in  indi 
vidual  initiative  and  local  vitality.  It  is  the  story  of  a  con 
stant  struggle  for  an  ever  more  complete  autonomy.  It  would 
be  interesting  to  put  opposite  it  the  history  of  an  old  French 
university  —  that  of  Paris,  Montpellier,  Toulouse  —  as  a  test 
of  the  degree  of  divergence  between  the  two  democracies. 
With  us,  the  contrary  work  has  been  done;  institutions  once 
independent  and  powerful  have  been  brought  under  the  cen 
tral  administration,  the  service  of  higher  education  has  become 
a  state  service.  When  there  was  a  question,  a  few  years  ago, 
of  giving  back  an  independent  existence  to  these  universities, 
now  absorbed  in  the  university,  one  of  the  most  eloquent 
orators  of  the  Republican  party,  M.  Challemel-Lacour,  main 
tained,  with  the  support  of  our  Senate  —  like  him  Republican 
—  that  such  a  measure  was  opposed  to  all  the  work  of  the 
Revolution.  His  Jacobinism  saw  clearly  in  this  matter,  and 
no  argument  more  strongly  shows  the  wretched  tyranny  of  the 
work  of  '89,  essentially  hostile  to  all  liberty,  destructive  of  all 
living  energy. 

As  for  higher  education  in  America,  it  began  where  ours 
ends.  When  in  1636  the  University  of  Harvard  —  then  of 
Cambridge  —  was  founded,  the  General  Court  of  Massachu 
setts —  that  is  to  say,  the  State  —  establishing  it  by  a  vote, 
this  Court  —  consequently  the  State  —  reserved  to  itself  the 
right  of  control.  The  " overseers"  or  surveillants  were  at 
this  date  the  governor  and  magistrates  of  the  colony,  by  vir 
tue  of  their  office,  and  they  had  full  power  to  administer  the 
funds  of  the  college.  But  in  a  few  words  of  the  charter  was 
already  indicated  the  future  of  the  University:  "All  the 
funds,"  it  ran,  "including  gifts,  legacies,  and  donations"  — 


EDUCATION  293 

From  the  first  the  founders  foresaw  that  the  co-operation  of 
private  persons  would  be  the  principal  support  of  their  insti 
tution,  and  already  in  1636  a  Nonconforming  clergyman,  of 
the  name  of  John  Harvard,  —  thus  becoming  the  godfather  of 
the  college,  —  made  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  gifts  by  virtue 
of  which  the  University  to-day  has  a  capital  of  twelve  million 
dollars  —  or  sixty  millions  of  francs. 

The  right  of  inheritance  and  possession  carries  as  inevitable 
corollary  the  right  to  administer  one's  possessions  at  will. 
Therefore  the  first  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  Harvard's 
existence  saw  continual  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  president 
and  professors  or  "fellows"  to  secure  this  second  right.  Not 
until  1814  did  they  obtain  it,  and  then  subject  to  the  control 
of  the  "overseers."  It  remained  to  secure  that  these  should 
themselves  be  incorporated  in  the  University. 

It  is  interesting  to  follow  this  attempt  during  these  eighty 
years.  They  began  by  modifying  the  law  under  which  the 
overseers  were  nominated.  They  thus  became  an  indepen 
dent  and  self-perpetuating  body.  This  independence  was 
already  a  guarantee  of  a  sort  of  autonomy.  A  law  was  then 
passed  that  the  State  of  Massachusetts  should  not  have  the 
right  to  modify  the  statutes  of  the  University  without  the 
united  consent  of  overseers  and  corporation.  A  new  step 
forward  was  taken  in  1843.  The  law  of  1810  provided  that 
the  board  of  overseers  must  include  fifteen  clergymen,  all  of 
them  Congregationalists.  In  1843  it  was  provided  that  these 
might  be  of  any  denomination,  and  in  1851  the  board  was 
authorized  to  dispense  with  clergymen  altogether.  In  1854  a 
bill  of  still  more  liberal  scope  was  introduced,  giving  all  the 
graduates  of  Harvard  a  vote  in  the  election  of  overseers;  but 
this  law  was  not  passed  until  1863.  It  contained,  however, 
this  restriction,  that  the  overseers  thus  chosen  must  be  resi 
dents  of  Massachusetts.  This  restriction  clause  was  abolished 
in  1880  as  the  last  vestige  of  injurious  state  supervision. 


294  OUTRE-MER 

At  the  present  time,  being  mistress  of  her  funds,  which  she 
administers  according  to  her  own  judgment,  mistress  of  her 
methods  of  instruction,  which  she  arranges  at  her  own  will, 
herself  naming  her  overseers  and  professors,  this  University, 
which  began  by  being  doubly  official,  since  it  was  under  the 
government  also  of  the  Church,  has  no  longer  to  reckon  with 
any  but  her  own  members.  She  is  free,  in  the  deepest  and 
fullest  sense  of  the  word,  and  the  statistics  are  there  to  show 
that  to  this  increase  of  independence  corresponds  an  increase 
of  vital  force.  The  number  of  students,  which  was  eleven 
hundred  in  1870,  was  in  1893  two  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  sixty-six.  There  were  forty-one  professors  ;  there  now  are 
eighty-six.  There  were  eighty-one  tutors ;  there  now  are  two 
hundred  and  ninety-four.  The  aid  extended  to  poor  students 
amounted  to  twenty-five  thousand  dollars;  it  is  now  eighty-nine 
thousand.  There  were  a  hundred  and  eighty-four  thousand 
volumes  in  the  library;  there  are  now  four  hundred  and 
twelve  thousand.  Now  translate  these  figures  into  concrete 
realities;  they  show  that  within  the  fifteen  or  twenty  years 
since  the  last  thread  was  cut  which  bound  together  the  State  and 
the  University  the  affluence  of  life  has  doubled  in  this  organism, 
that  its  overseers  have  been  more  active,  its  professors  more 
diligent,  its  students  more  in  earnest.  Let  our  French  fac 
ulties  to-morrow  be  thus  masters  of  themselves,  not  nominally, 
but  really,  without  minister  or  inspector  or  council  to  rule 
them;  let  them  inherit  and  possess;  let  them  modify  their 
courses  of  teaching  according  to  their  own  views  and  the  needs 
of  their  region  ;  let  the  teachers,  chosen  by  their  own  colleagues, 
feel  themselves  really  in  their  own  place,  and  the  students,  too, 
and  with  all  this  let  the  great  central  schools  be  suppressed,  to 
leave  to  the  universities  their  full  range  of  influence,  —  and  the 
same  causes  would  produce  the  same  effects,  and  the  intel 
lectual  life  of  our  provinces  would  suddenly  awake.  Alas  !  we 
are  not  travelling  in  this  direction. 


EDUCATION  295 

Harvard  University  is  composed  of  the  college, — properly 
so  called,  —  a  scientific  school,  a  graduate  school,  and  six 
professional  schools.  Two  of  these  —  the  schools  of  law  and 
theology  —  are  in  Cambridge,  like  the  college  itself.  The 
four  others,  those  of  medicine,  dental  surgery,  veterinary  sur 
gery,  and  agriculture,  are  in  Boston.  The  college  students 
are  about  two-thirds  of  the  whole  number.  It  is  therefore 
the  college  life  that  we  must  try  to  picture  to  ourselves  in  order 
to  understand  the  soul  of  Harvard,  and  the  social  type  elabo 
rated  during  the  four  years  of  the  full  course,  —  the  "  fresh 
man,"  "  sophomore,"  "junior,"  and  "  senior  "  years.  These  are 
the  names  taken  by  the  student  from  twelvemonth  to  twelve 
month,  and  they  explain  themselves. 

Equality  and  activity,  especially  equality,  are  the  essential 
characteristics  which  emerge,  on  a  first  glance,  over  the  sort 
of  life  which  these  young  people  lead  during  these  four  years. 
If  the  English  proposed  to  send  sons  of  the  nobility  to  Oxford, 
in  order  to  create  the  complex  type  of  the  "  gentleman,"  the 
Americans  appear,  on  their  part,  to  have  proposed  to  bring 
together  poor  boys  and  rich  boys  in  order  to  abolish,  or  even 
to  forestall,  that  prejudice  against  paid  work  which  is,  in  fact, 
the  principle  most  destructive  of  democracy.  To  put  our 
finger  on  the  distinction,  I  may  transcribe  here  a  letter  quoted 
by  Mr.  Frank  Bolles,  the  treasurer  of  the  University,  which 
by  itself  alone  will,  better  than  any  analysis,  make  the  reader 
acquainted  with  the  conditions  under  which  the  young  Harvard 
men  pursue  their  studies.  It  is  the  detailed  account,  year  by 
year  and  figure  by  figure,  of  the  methods  employed  by  a  poor 
student  to  pay  his  own  way  through  college.  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  expenses  of  a  student  are  pretty  high,  especially  for  a 
comparatively  small  town  such  as  Cambridge.  But  here  we 
see  another  American  characteristic.  Having  the  alternative  of 
diminishing  his  expenses  or  increasing  his  work,  the  American 
always  prefers  to  increase  his  work. 


296  OUTRE-MER 

The  poor  student,  whose  statement  Mr.  Bolles  reports,  fixes 
his  freshman  expenses  at  three  hundred  and  eighty-one  dol 
lars,  his  sophomore  expenses  at  three,  hundred  and  sixty-one, 
those  of  the  junior  year  at  three  hundred  and  ninety-five,  and 
those  of  the  senior  year  at  four  hundred  and  sixty-two.  He 
had  twenty-five  dollars  of  debts  when  he  entered  Harvard. 
He  was,  therefore,  obliged  to  earn  money,  and  a  large  sum  of 
money,  during  these  four  years,  while  at  the  same  time  pursuing 
his  studies. 

The  details  of  the  methods  he  employed  are  very  significant. 
As  freshman,  he  "  made  "  three  hundred  and  forty-six  dollars, 
thus  divided  :  a  prize  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  a  loan 
of  fifteen  dollars  on  his  watch,  seventy-one  dollars  earned  by 
type-writing  for  his  fellow-students,  eight  dollars  by  selling 
books,  two  dollars  by  tutoring. 

As  sophomore  he  used  the  same  methods,  except  that,  in 
view  of  the  smallness  of  the  prize  gained  that  year,  he  decided 
to  wait  at  table.  His  work  as  waiter  brought  him  thirty-eight 
dollars.  It  may  be  remarked  that  this  is  not  an  isolated  case. 
Many  Harvard  students  gain  by  this  means,  especially  during 
vacations,  the  small  overplus  of  resources  which  they  require. 
This  student,  in  his  second  year,  added  to  this  business  that  of 
preparing  the  brains  of  sheep  for  the  lectures  of  Professor 
William  James,  the  great  psychologist. 

The  third  year,  the  junior,  appears  to  have  been  easier.  Tu 
toring  brought  him  in  more  —  one  hundred  and  twenty  dollars. 
He  got  work  in  the  library  that  helped  to  set  him  on  his  feet. 
A  large  prize  which  he  took  in  the  fourth  year  put  an  end  to 
his  difficulties,  and  he  left  college  at  the  completion  of  his 
studies,  having  met  all  his  own  expenses  during  the  four  years, 
and  put  aside  a  small  sum  of  money. 

This  is  a  perfect  specimen  of  the  American  student,  and  Mr. 
Bolles  is  right  in  concluding  at  the  close  of  this  letter :  "  A 
young  man  who  has  gone  through  all  this  is  certain  to  succeed 


EDUCATION  297 

in  any  calling."  He  cites  among  possible  careers,  railway 
service,  journalism,  book-publishing,  political  life,  and  teaching. 
The  elasticity  of  this  programme  of  the  future  is  simply  in 
conformity  with  the  genius  of  a  country  where  a  man  finds  it 
perfectly  natural  to  change  his  profession  at  forty,  fifty,  or  sixty 
years.  One  consequence  of  this  facility  of  guiding  his  life  in 
the  most  opposite  directions  is  that  the  "poor  scholar"  is 
unknown  in  the  United  States.  The  students  who  wait  upon 
their  classmates,  napkin  on  arm  and  dish  in  hand,  and  who  will 
presently  be  sitting  on  the  same  benches  with  them,  attending 
the  same  lectures  and  passing  the  same  examinations,  have,  if 
one  may  so  speak,  taken  and  given  a  lesson  of  destiny.  They 
know  and  they  demonstrate  that  the  man  of  energy  accepts  all 
and  conquers  all,  if  only  he  will.  Neither  he  nor  his  fellow- 
students  will  forget  the  lesson. 

Such  letters  give  a  sort  of  sketch,  accurate  though  cold,  of 
one  kind  of  life.  To  give  it  color,  to  change  these  true  though 
abstract  details  into  a  living  picture,  one  must  go  himself  to 
Cambridge,  and  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  setting  in  which 
such  a  career  is  possible  and  even  normal.  No  excursion 
could  be  easier.  Hundreds  of  electric  tram-cars  connect  it 
with  Boston  by  day  and  night.  You  cross  the  broad  river 
Charles ;  then  about  two  miles  of  a  country  all  built  up  with 
small  wooden  houses,  with  verandas,  where  the  eternal  rocking- 
chair  awaits  the  American's  wearied  repose. 

The  car  is  filled  with  young  men  and  young  women.  Of  the 
latter,  in  this  suburb  of  a  student  town,  not  a  single  one  would 
suggest  the  idea  of  a  bad  character.  The  demi-grisette,  the 
half-venal,  half-sentimental  mistress,  who  abounds  in  our  Latin 
quarter,  does  not  exist  here.  The  type  that  you  have  met  in 
these  cars  is  chiefly  that  of  a  girl  from  eighteen  to  twenty-five 
years  old,  thin  and  slight,  with  quantities  of  auburn  hair,  a  deli 
cate,  freckled  face,  bright  eyes,  and  a  smile  that  has  a  sort  of 
stern  languor,  telling  of  too  much  work,  too  much  tension,  too 


298  OUTRE-MER 

much  endeavor  —  not  her  own,  but  of  her  race,  of  a  whole 
long  ancestry  behind  her.  The  well-kept  teeth  show  white 
between  the  parted  lips,  which  droop  at  the  corners.  The 
voice  is  harsh  and  slightly  nasal.  The  neck  is  thin,  and  sug 
gests  a  thin  body,  the  frail  anatomy  of  which  you  guess  at  — 
for  it  is  winter  —  under  the  double-breasted  coat,  the  knitted 
jacket,  the  flannels,  and  the  "combinations."  The  whole  per 
son  stands  on  india-rubber  shoes,  and  is  enveloped  in  india 
rubber,  suggesting  the  factory  and  the  waterproof. 

Where  is  this  child  going?  Is  she  a  student  of  the  "  Annex,"  . 
the  portion  of  the  University  reserved  to  women?  Is  she  a 
dressmaker  going  back  to  her  shop,  a  salesgirl  going  to  her 
store,  a  doctress  going  to  her  patient,  a  clairvoyant  about  to 
give  a  private  seance,  an  actress  returning  from  a  rehearsal? 
This  creature  might  equally  well  adapt  herself  to  all  situations, 
exercise  all  callings,  except  that  of  trafficker  in  love ;  and  the 
youths  who  sit  facing  or  beside  her,  with  books,  or  racquets,  or 
skates  under  their  arm,  according  to  the  occasion,  are  also  pre 
pared  for  all  feats  of  daring,  except  an  adventure  of  gallantry. 
I  am  told  that  a  certain  number  go  into  Boston  for  nocturnal 
dissipation.  It  is  possible.  But  in  that  case,  this  is  a  real 
debauch,  a  lower  ph'ase  of  life,  so  coarse,  so  distinct  from  all 
the  rest,  that  the  young  man  is  degraded  by  it,  and  not  cor 
rupted.  The  difference  is  great.  The  temporary  household 
of  the  Parisian  student,  with  its  daily  intercourse  and  its 
romanticism,  bears  witness  to  greater  refinement,  but  it  is  far 
more  dangerous  to  the  healthiness  of  future  life. 

The  aspect  of  Cambridge  on  the  winter  day  when  I  reached 
it  by  the  gliding  of  the  rapid  but  commonplace  car,  was  de 
lightful  to  see.  The  great  red  University  buildings  looked  all 
the  redder  against  the  white  snow.  The  little  wooden  houses, 
in  general  the  dwellings  of  professors,  wore  a  pleasant  look  of 
friendliness,  gray  and  neutral  between  the  white  ground  and 
the  red  of  the  vast  edifices  reserved  for  libraries  and.  museum^ 


EDUCATION  299 

and  students'  rooms.  The  pines  showed  black  against  the  cold 
blue  sky,  and  so  did  the  leafless  branches  of  other  trees,  slender 
and  fragile  frameworks  where  sparrows  were  twittering.  Purple 
berries  gleamed  in  the  shrubberies,  making  gay  this  peaceful, 
quiet  scene  of  study. 

There  were  students  passing  and  repassing  on  the  wooden 
sidewalks,  swept  clean  from  snow.  They  were  simply  dressed, 
and  between  their  lips  they  held  the  short  wooden  pipe  of 
a  shape  special  to  Harvard.  They  go  where  they  please  and 
do  what  they  please.  More  independent  than  their  contem 
poraries  at  Oxford,  they  are  not  even  subject  to  the  obli 
gation  to  be  in  at  a  fixed  hour,  which  is  the  first  servitude 
of  a  Balliol  or  Christ  Church  man.  The  second  is  the  neces 
sity  of  presence  at  table.  Harvard  men  know  no  more  of 
this  than  of  the  other.  They  are  not,  like  the  English,  set  in  a 
sort  of  lay  monastery,  part  cloister,  part  club,  and  part  gym 
nasium.  The  rooms  in  which  they  live  in  the  buildings  set 
down  here  and  there  in  the  neighborhood  of  Memorial  Hall 
are  subject  to  no  supervision.  They  live  there  as  at  a  hotel, 
giving  no  account  of  .their  actions. 

There  is  a  great  diversity  in  the  elegance  of  these  rooms,  as 
well  as  in  their  price.  Most  generally  two  students  live  together. 
One  parlor  serves  them  as  study  and  two  closets  as  bedrooms. 
Two  desks,  two  bookcases,  two  sets  of  furniture,  divide  the 
study  into  two  distinct  domains.  Everywhere  are  the  inevi 
table  rocking-chairs,  and  on  all  the  window-seats  of  the  guillo 
tine  windows  are  small  mattresses  with  pillows,  where  they 
stretch  themselves  to  read,  to  smoke,  to  look  at  the  view.  On 
the  walls  are  hung  the  medallions  of  clubs  and  photographs 
that  tell  of  the  favorite  pastimes  of  the  owners  of  the  room  : 
football  teams,  yacht  crews,  theatre  scenes,  views  of  Europe, 
Egypt,  the  Holy  Land.  Almost  all  of  them  have  been  "  abroad," 
and  the  rest  are  going.  In  the  most  expensive  rooms  which, 
like  those  in  Claverley  Hall,  cost  six,  seven,  eight  hundred  dol- 


300  OUTRE-MER 

lars,  the  student  lives  alone,  and  usually  the  two  little  rooms 
give  the  impression  of  a  club  man  :  almost  no  books,  a  slight 
desk  with  folding  cover,  steady  enough  to  scratch  off  a  note 
upon,  but  too  fragile  to  support  a  dictionary  or  to  work  upon : 
everywhere  mementos  of  races,  balls,  and  hunting.  In  this  in 
equality  of  expenditure  so  offensive  to  us,  we  really  find  the 
democratic  spirit  of  America.  What  is  equal  with  them  is 
respect  for  the  individual.  He  is  left  equally  free  to  spend 
his  money  or  not  to  spend  it,  to  have  it  or  not  to  have  it. 
Any  regulation,  however  wise,  would  encroach  upon  this  vig 
orous  freedom  of  action  which  to  them  appears  to  be  the 
grandest  of  human  qualities.  On  reflection  we  see  that  they 
are  right.  Our  system,  which  makes  rich  children  and  poor 
children  live  in  our  schools  under  the  same  material  con 
ditions,  has  for  its  most  certain  result  to  develop  the  most 
furious  envy  when  this  identity  of  life  suddenly  ceases  with 
the  young  man's  entrance  into  the  world.  This  disastrous 
influence  has  less  chance  of  being  born  when  there  has  never 
been  any  such  identity. 

One  of  the  most  striking  features  of  Harvard  life,  giving 
the  measure  of  the  spirit  of  independent  action,  is  the  number 
of  clubs  or  societies  which  the  students  maintain  by  them 
selves  outside  of  all  administrative  control.  There  are  no 
fewer  than  forty-nine  of  them,  each  one  founded  with  a  posi 
tive  and  definite  purpose.  To  read  over  their  lists  and  pro 
grammes  is  to  pass  in  review  all  the  interests  of  the  American 
student,  his  labors  and  his  pleasures. 

Some  of  these  clubs,  like  the  Porcellian,  are  the  precise 
image  of  a  closed  circle  of  New  York  or  Boston.  The  club 
derives  its  name  and  emblem  —  a  boar's  head  —  from  a  cele 
brated  dinner  given  in  1791  by  one  of  its  members,  at  which 
a  whole  pig  was  served  as  a  roast.  You  observe,  here  again, 
in  the  fidelity  with  which  these  young  men  adhere  to  the 
comic  surname,  in  the  pride  with  which  they  show  you  some 


EDUCATION  301 

last  century's  reviews  on  the  shelves  of  their  library,  the  con 
stant  desire  to  overlay  the  present  with  the  past.  One  of 
them,  who  had  passed  some  time  at  Oxford,  used  a  very  sin 
gular  and  suggestive  expression  to  describe  how  much  in  a 
new  civilization  is  slight  and  superficial  and  thin. 

"We  feel  the  want  of  density  so  much  here,"  he  said. 

The  principal  object  of  some  other  clubs,  like  the  "Hasty 
Pudding,"  is  to  give  dramatic  representations.  The  name  of 
this  club,  which  also  recalls  a  culinary  whim,  corresponds  well 
with  the  character  of  good  humor  everywhere  imprinted  on 
the  little  house  where  it  abides.  Most  of  the  pieces  played 
on  the  stage  of  the  ground-floor  are  satirical  buffooneries 
composed  by  the  students  themselves.  The  spirit  of  these 
lively  boys  is  shed  abroad  on  the  walls  in  grotesque  pro 
grammes,  drawn  with  a  certain  power  of  gayety.  I  am  told 
that  the  club  is  expensive,  each  member  being  assessed  fifty 
dollars  a  year.  At  the  time  of  my  visit  a  broad-shouldered 
young  man,  with  the  build  of  a  boxer,  his  fine  eyes  hidden  by 
spectacles,  was  seated  at  the  piano,  accompanying  himself  in 
singing  a  Yokohama  song.  He  went  to  the  Pacific  islands 
last  year,  and  doubtless  his  companions  will  go  in  a  year  or 
five  or  ten.  There  is  quite  a  body  of  Americans  in  the  extreme 
Orient.  Japan  is  so  near  —  thirteen  days  from  Vancouver, 
fifteen  from  San  Francisco.  In  this  students'  club  I  find  a 
tiny  trace  of  this  exotic  influence.  I  found  it  in  Washington 
the  other  day  when  I  sat  at  dinner  beside  a  young  girl  who 
was  all  absorbed  in  Buddhism,  and  in  Boston  where  a  very 
distinguished  doctor,  who  has  been  completely  initiated,  said 
to  me,  drawing  two  concentric  circles  on  the  table :  — 

"  Christianity  is  to  Buddhism  what  this  small  circle  is  to  the 
large  one." 

And  his  conversation  was  filled  with  formulae  of  Hindoo 
wisdom,  which  seemed  all  the  more  striking  coming  from 
those  stern  and  decided  Yankee  lips. 


302  OUTRE-MER 

"There  are  many  roads  that  lead  to  the  mountain,"  he  con 
cluded,  speaking  of  the  different  religions,  "but  the  landscape 
around  it  remains  always  the  same."  "We  are  all  living  on 
the  surface  of  our  being,"  he  said  again. 

The  young  fellows  of  the  Hasty  Pudding  have  not  got  so 
far  as  to  plunge  into  these  formulae  beneath  which  lies  the 
abyss  of  the  grand,  but  deadly  metaphysical  vision.  But  I 
shall  not  be  astonished  if  there  is  some  day  at  Harvard  a 
Buddhist  club,  as  already,  beside  the  circles  for 'pleasure  and 
for  the  theatre,  there  is  a  Christian  circle,  the  St.  Paul,  and  a 
philosophical  circle,  the  Harvard  Philosophical  Club,  whose 
purpose  is  thus  described  in  the  prospectus:  "A  genial  and 
pronounced  individuality  is  as  great  a  requirement  for  mem 
bership  as  to  be  deeply  versed  in  philosophy." 

Then  there  is  a  whole  series  of  literary  and  secret  societies 
that  by  an  artlessly  humorous  pedantry  are  called  by  Greek 
letters:  the  Delta  Phi  society,  the  Delta  Upsilon,  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa,  Pi  Eta,  Theta  Delta,  Zeta  Psi.  There  is  a 
series  of  sporting  societies,  the  Boat  Club,  the  Cycling  Asso 
ciation,  the  Cricket  Club,  the  Football  Club,  the  Baseball  Club, 
the  Photographic  Society,  the  Camera  Club  ;  there  are  political 
clubs,  the  Democratic,  and  the  Republican  ;  musical  societies, 
the  Banjo  Club,  the  Guitar  and  Mandolin,  the  Pierian. 
There  is  a  series  of  associations  for  the  publication  of  serious 
or  humorous  periodicals,  the  Lampoon,  the  Crimson,  the  Ad 
vocate,  the  Monthly.  The  youthful  editors  of  these  periodi 
cals  would  not  be  American  if  these  enterprises  did  not 
become  real  business  undertakings.  Last  year,  to  give  only 
a  single  example,  the  Crimson  brought  in  to  its  editor-in- 
chief  five  hundred  dollars,  and  a  hundred  dollars  to  each  of 
the  other  editors.  I  have  looked  over  some  of  these  sheets. 
They  are,  in  fact,  real  newspapers,  filled  with  news  interesting 
to  the  University.  I  read  in  one  of  them  an  excellent  criti 
cism  of  Le  Manage  For$e  given  by  the  members  of  the  Cercle 


EDUCATION  303 

Fran$ais  and  a  discussion  of  a  decree  of  the  overseers.  Ad 
vertisements  abound,  filling  two  or  three  pages.  In  the 
Advocate  I  find  a  witty  essay  on  "Feminology,"  which  closes 
by  a  quotation  from  Maupassant :  "Cette  canaillerie  charmante, 
cette  tromperie  raffinee,  cette  malicieuse  perfidie,  toutes  ces  per- 
verses  qualites  qui poussent  au  suicide  les  amants  imbecile ment 
credules  et  qui  ravissent  les  autres. ' ' 

This  quotation  and  a  poem  entitled  Fleur  du  mat  with  the 
last  line  "I  hear  the  mocking  laugh  of  Baudelaire,"  bear  wit 
ness  to  the  freedom  of  mind  of  these  young  men  and  the 
boldness  of  their  range  of  reading.  This  admiration  for 
French  writers  of  the  extreme  Left  is  one  of  the  features  that 
most  distinguishes  America  from  England.  But  it  suffices  to 
converse  with  the  men  and  women  who  profess  it,  to  perceive 
that  their  interest  is  entirely  in  the  sphere  of  the  intellect  and 
the  will.  It  does  not  reach  the  deep  sources  of  private  life, 
which  are  still  simple  and  somewhat  primitive.  The  un 
healthy  complexity  of  our  great  artists  is  a  subject  of  curiosity 
to  Americans  of  both  sexes,  a  sort  of  moral  bibelot,  to  be 
looked  at  and  handled  like  a  cup  of  peculiar  form  which 
nobody  ever  drinks  out  of.  Here,  especially  in  this  whole 
some  setting  of  Harvard,  the  difference  of  surroundings  puts 
these  young  men  in  the  same  mental  attitude  toward  our  con 
temporary  authors  that  they  have  toward  the  Alexandrian 
poets  and  the  Arabian  story-tellers.  The  realities  of  their 
own  life,  which  preserve  their  hearts  from  being  poisoned  by 
the  senses  and  their  wills  by  dreams,  are  work  and  sport, 
good  fellowship  and  athletics,  the  intense  attractions  of  the 
gymnasium  with  its  running  track  and  its  thousand  appliances, 
which  include  instruments  to  develop  all  muscles,  even  to 
those  of  the  fingers.  They  are  safeguarded,  too,  by  their 
precocious  aptitude  for  organization,  which  enables  them  to 
administer  for  themselves  such  establishments  as  Memorial 
Hall,  where  eleven  hundred  of  them  eat  daily  at  an  expense 


304  OUTRE-MER 

of  more  than  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  They  handle  these 
sums  with  the  wisdom  and  the  strict  probity  which  they  will 
one  day  apply  to  the  management  of  their  own  property. 

Again,  we  perceive  that  in  the  university  as  in  the  school  the 
Americans  have  sought  and  have  obtained  the  perfect  harmony 
of  education  and  life.  Here  again  they  have  been  guided  by 
facts.  Their  good  sense  has  preserved  them  from  the  too 
tempting  imitation  of  European  things.  They  have  neither 
built  up  a  false  English  university,  as  might  have  been  feared, 
nor  a  false  German  university.  But  to  look  into  the  faces  of 
the  students,  so  energetic,  so  virile,  with  an  expression  of 
decided  candor  all  their  own,  you  feel  that  they  have  succeeded 
in  producing  just  the  stamp  of  man  which  their  democracy 
needs.  You  feel  also  that  they  have  not  yet  done  away  with 
that  trace  of  stern  harshness  natural  to  the  son  of  a  recent  and 
still  incomplete  nation.  And  yet  Harvard  is  the  most  tradi 
tional  of  American  universities,  the  most  like  Europe.  How  I 
wish  I  had  leisure  to  test  my  observations  of  it  by  the  others, 
above  all  those  of  the  West,  whose  student  cheers  express  a 
singularly  untamed  joy  of  living.  Here,  for  example,  is  the 
"  cheer  "  of  the  University  of  Illinois,  "  Rah-hoo-rah,  Zip-boom 
ah  !  Hip-zoo,  rah  zoo,  Jimmy,  blow  your  bazoo.  Ip-sidi-iki, 
U.  of  I.,  Champaign  !  "  and  that  of  the  University  of  Indiana, 
"  Gloriana,  Frangipana,  Indiana  !  Kazoo,  Kazah  !  Kazoo, 
Kazah  !  Hoop  Lah  !  Hoop  Lah  !  State  University,  Rah  ! 
Rah  !  Rah  !  "  and  that  of  Denver,  "  U,  U,  U,  of  D,  Den-ver, 
Ver-si-tee  !  Kai  Gar  Wahoo  Zip  boom  — D.  U.  !"  The 
University  of  North  Dakota  follows  with  her  cry,  "  Odz-dzo- 
dzi !  Ri-ri-ri  !  Hy-ah  !  Hy-ah  !  North  Dakota  !  " 

I  doubt  whether  the  roar  of  a  lion  is  more  wild  and  blood 
curdling  than  these  onomatopoean  cries,  issuing  from  broad 
chests  and  robust  wide-open  lungs,  suggesting  health  that  would 
suffice  for  years  of  hard  work  and  bitter  competition.  Health 
is  the  first  of  conditions  in  a  country  without  a  middle  class, 


EDUCATION  305 

where  the  rentier  does  not  exist  and  where  the  student  who 
is  rich  to-day  will  to-morrow,  by  a  freak  of  fortune,  be  the  poor 
engineer,  the  needy  journalist,  the  business  man  in  straitened 
circumstances,  the  doctor  without  patients ;  in  fact,  the  man 
compelled  to  struggle  for  life,  as  though  he  had  never  been 
either  freshman  or  sophomore,  junior  or  senior.  Let  us  not 
be  anxious  about  him.  He  is  ready. 

And  they  are  ready  also,  the  freshmen,  the  seniors  and  the 
juniors  of  that  woman's  college,  which  rises  at  the  edge  of  the 
little  Lake  Waban,  at  Wellesley,  near  Boston,  its  great  red 
building  in  the  shape  of  a  Latin  cross,  with  its  brick  villas  and 
its  wooden  cottages.  A  college  !  How  inadequately  that  word, 
so  sad  and  dreary  in  French,  represents  the  freshness  and 
poetry  of  this  oasis  !  It  is  most  truly  a  young  girl's  university, 
a  sort  of  realization  of  that  fantasy  of  Tennyson's,  "  The  Prin 
cess,"  concerning  which  Taine  has  written,  "No  jest  is  more 
romantic  or  more  tender.  You  smile  to  hear  weighty,  learned 
words  issuing  from  those  rosy  lips.  .  .  .  Clad  in  lilac  silk  dresses, 
with  golden  girdles,  they  listen  to  passages  of  history  and  prom 
ises  of  social  renovation." 

But  that  the  toilettes  of  the  lovely  Wellesleyans  are  more 
modern,  these  lines  of  the  great  philosopher  might  be  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  catalogue  of  this  singular  institution.  I  say 
singular,  involuntarily  taking  the  Gallo-Roman  point  of  view, 
which  admits  of  no  other  means  of  education  for  women  than 
the  convent  or  the  paternal  roof.  The  girls'  school  with  us  is 
but  a  lay  convent,  without  that  which  alone  corrects  its  seclusion 
and  monotonous  discipline ;  namely,  confession  and  com 
munion.  In  vain  it  bears  the  name  of  academy,  after  the 
fashion  of  boys'  schools ;  it  is  radically,  unalterably  different. 
Nowhere  is  the  radical  inequality  between  the  two  sexes,  which 
forms  the  very  foundation  of  our  society,  more  perceptible  than 
in  the  difference  between  the  methods  and  the  results  of  the 
x 


306  OUTRE-MER 

two  modes  of  teaching.  I  have  elsewhere  tried  to  show  for 
what  infinitely  complex  reasons  Americans  uphold  the  truly 
democratic  dogma  of  absolute  equality  between  man  and 
woman.  True  to  their  great  principle  of  accepting  all  the 
practical  consequences  of  the  truths  in  which  they  believe, 
they  could  not  but  make  the  education  of  both  identical.  In 
the  mixed  schools  that  reform  has  already  been  realized  so  far 
as  primary  and  secondary  education  is  concerned.  Wellesley 
is  one  of  the  most  complete  attempts  to  realize  it  in  higher 
education. 

This  attempt  —  like  all  those  which  the  traveller  finds  in  this 
country,  where  the  State  is  nothing  —  was  due  to  private  ini 
tiative.  At  the  risk  of  being  monotonous  we  must  not  weary 
of  repeating  this  observation.  All  things  grow  clear  in  the 
United  States  when  one  understands  them  as  an  immense  act 
of  faith  in  the  social  beneficence  of  individual  energy  left  to 
itself.  This,  so  to  speak,  is  the  mystical  basis  of  their  realism, 
the  message  that  they  bring  to  the  world,  and  above  all  to  us 
French  people,  whom  the  most  retrograde  of  revolutions  has 
for  the  last  hundred  years  made  the  slaves  of  a  centralized 
state.  Nor  must  we  weary  of  telling  of  the  moral  dramas  of 
which  those  generous  foundations  are  nearly  always  the  out 
come.  Here  is  the  one  to  which  Wellesley  owes  its  birth :  — 

In  1863  there  lived  in  Boston  a  distinguished  lawyer,  Mr. 
Henry  P'owle  Durant.  His  portrait  gives  one  the  idea  of  a 
face  most  refined,  radiant,  with  an  expression  at  once  gentle 
and  bright.  The  somewhat  stern  line,  observable  in  the  faces 
of  so  many  Americans,  is  seen  at  the  corner  of  the  nostril. 
The  chin  is  rather  long  and  prominent,  the  face  absolutely 
smooth,  with  that  expression  of  fixed  intensity  which  we  find 
among  all  who  are  compelled  to  self-restraint  and  self-com 
mand,  such  as  doctors,  clergymen,  and  actors.  Those  who 
have  known  Mr.  Durant  speak  of  him  as  having  a  body  so  thin 
and  frail,  so  delicate  in  its  motions,  that  he  reminded  them 


EDUCATION  307 

invariably  of  the  words  of  the  apostle,  "  He  will  be  raised  a 
spiritual  body."  We  may  imagine  from  such  details  and  from 
small  photographic  likenesses  one  of  those  too  sensitive  organ 
isms  which  life  touches  very  deeply,  and  which  cannot  support 
it  unless  they  interpose  between  themselves  and  reality  an 
abstract  faith,  in  which  they  wrap  themselves  for  protection. 
In  the  year  1863  this  tender-hearted  man  lost  his  only  son. 
The  trial  was  so  severe  that  instinctively  he  sought  refuge  in 
religion.  He  became,  says  the  biographer  from  whom  I  bor 
row  these  details,  the  most  intense  of  evangelical  Christians. 
It  was  in  this  crisis  of  mysticism  that  the  vigorous  spirit  of 
positivism,  always  present  in  the  American,  showed  itself.  He 
abandoned  his  profession  as  a  lawyer,  which  no  longer  seemed 
to  him  to  be  in  accord  with  the  ardor  of  his  new  convictions. 
His  wife  and  he  began  to  consider  what  use  they  could  make 
of  their  fortune.  Debating  the  matter,  they  conceived  the 
scheme  of  founding  a  university  for  women,  the  basis  of  which 
should  be  the  Bible.  "  Mr.  Durant,"  adds  the  same  biog 
rapher,  "said  strongly  both  in  public  and  private,  that  the 
object  of  his  college  was  to  form  learned  Christian  women, 
Christian  wives  and  Christian  mothers." 

In  1871  the  first  stone  of  the  college  was  laid.  It  has  now 
had  twenty  years  of  activity.  The  sum  expended  by  the 
founder  was  more  than  eight  hundred  thousand  dollars.  Other 
persons  added  to  the  endowment,  and  at  the  present  time  this 
succession  of  private  munificence  has.  brought  the  property  of 
the  college  to  the  sum  of  $1,636,900. 

When  modern  Americans  talk  of  Christianity  we  are  haunted 
by  the  recollection  of  puritan  fanaticism,  but  we  err.  They 
understand  thereby  simply  a  rather  small  number  of  essential 
principles  which  must  be  taken  "for  granted."  This  is  the 
expression  which  they  constantly  make  use  of,  when  they  are 
questioned  regarding  their  moral  or  religious  education.  Their 
fundamental  realism  causes  them  to  consider  as  useless  any 


308  OUTRE-MER 

discussions  which  call  into  question  these  first  postulates.  So 
far  they  are  all  naturally  Christian,  if  we  may  say  so.  But 
these  doctrines  once  admitted,  their  tolerance  is  infinite.  I 
observe,  for  example,  in  the  list  of  professions  of  faith  repre 
sented  at  Wellesley  sixteen  different  sects ;  Congregationalists, 
Presbyterians,  Baptists,  Methodists,  Unitarians,  Reformed, 
Quakers,  Lutherans,  Universalists,  even  Swedenborgians.  This 
diversity  of  beliefs  goes  to  show  in  what  spirit  the  Biblical 
programme  of  Mr.  Durant  has  been  developed.  One  of  the 
teachers  in  the  College  has  written  :  "  What  we  should  like  to 
suppress  in  this  world  is  the  frivolous  and  the  ascetic  woman." 
Visiting  the  College  yourself,  and  rectifying  your  observations 
by  conversation  and  the  reading  of  the  catalogue,  you  perceive 
that  everything  here  is  arranged  with  a  view  to  this  double 
result,  —  on  the  one  hand,  to  form  the  minds  of  these  young 
girls  by  a  thorough  instruction  equal  to  that  of  the  young  men 
of  Harvard  or  Yale,  and  on  the  other  to  adapt  these  girls  to 
the  habits  of  elegance  and  comfort  common  to  the  prosperous 
class  in  their  country.  If  the  religious  life  is  hidden  beneath 
this  free  regime  it  is  only  as  the  regulator  of  a  machine  is 
hidden. 

You  enter  the  principal  building  and  you  find  yourself  in  a 
hall,  resembling,  with  its  green  plants,  its  pictures,  its  statues, 
its  lacquered  furniture,  the  interior  of  one  of  those  sumptuous 
New  York  hotels,  in  which  entire  families  pass  their  seasons 
year  after  year.  You  mount  the  wooden  staircase,  wainscoted 
like  that  of  a  club.  All  along  the  corridors,  which  are  also  fur 
nished  with  statues,  pictures,  and  plants,  open  the  students' 
rooms.  They  usually  live  two  together,  like  the  Harvard  stu 
dents.  They  have  two  little  sleeping-rooms  and  a  common 
sitting-room,  which  does  not  differ  in  the  least  from  the  sitting- 
room  to  which  every  American  woman  who  is  at  all  refined  is 
accustomed.  Photographs,  flowers,  furniture  of  light  wood, 
and  lounges  with  cushions  of  chintz,  printed  in  fanciful  pat- 


EDUCATION  309 

terns,  show  off  the  elegance  of  these  dainty  little  chambers,  the 
occupants  of  which,  by  the  way,  have  nothing  monastic  about 
them.  They  are  constantly  asking  one  another  to  tea.  They 
also  invite  young  men.  Every  Saturday  evening  the  gymna 
sium  ceases  to  be  an  athletic  club  and  is  transformed  into  a 
ballroom,  to  which  they  invite  their  friends  from  Boston  and 
Cambridge,  as  if  they  were  living  at  home  with  their  parents. 
They  go  and  come,  in  and  out  of  the  house,  without  giving 
account  of  their  conduct.  Some  are  rowing  on  the  lake,  others 
riding  on  horseback,  others  driving  phaetons.  Others  have 
gone  by  train  to  Boston,  alone,  of  course.  They  merely  said 
that  they  were  going  into  town.  No  surveillance  is  exercised 
over  them  during  their  absence.  No  questions  are  asked  of 
them  on  their  return.  Since  they  intend  entering  on  life,  to 
become  individuals  capable  of  defending  themselves,  they 
must  be  educated  with  this  end  in  view.  And,  moreover,  a 
most  equitable  law  which  punishes  the  seducer  equally  with 
the  forger  and  the  thief,  would  protect  them  even  were  their 
own  characters  and  those  of  the  men  whom  they  met  in 
sufficient. 

This  Draconian  code  appears  to  us  in  France  to  savor 
strongly  of  Pharisaism.  It  seems  to  us,  also,  that  it  must  give 
room  for  the  detestable  practice  of  blackmailing.  The  value 
of  laws  is  measured  by  their  results,  and  the  States  where  these 
laws  are  in  force  are  certainly  those  in  which  the  personality  of 
women  is  developed  with  the  greatest  amount  of  energy  and 
happiness.  Surely  this  shows  progress  beyond  countries  like 
our  own,  where  the  relations  of  the  sexes  are  still  so  grotesquely 
unequal  that  when  a  case  of  seduction  occurs  it  is  the  woman 
who  is  dishonored,  and  the  illegitimate  child  must  be  wholly 
cared  for  at  the  expense  of  the  mother,  since  the  search  after 
paternity  is  forbidden.  We  shall  have  changed  our  regime 
several  times  yet  before  we  shall  dare  on  this  point,  as  on  so 
many  others,  to  attempt  one  of  those  moral  revolutions  which 


310  OUTRE-MER 

are  as  fruitful  as  political  and  social  revolutions  are  vain  and 
criminal. 

Are  the  girl  students  whose  youthful  grace  is  sheltered  in 
this  elegant  and  comfortable  Wellesley  equal  to  the  men,  and 
are  they  as  well  protected?  Are  they  contented  with  their 
lot,  or  do  they  long  for  still  more  liberty?  Surely,  if  they 
wish  to  criticise  the  system  to  which  they  are  subjected,  the 
habit  of  public  debate,  as  well  as  the  quality  of  their  instruc 
tion,  admits  of  it.  Nothing  is  more  curious  than  the  contrast 
between  the  severity  of  their  studies  and  the  coquetry  of  those 
palaces  and  cottages  standing  on  the  shores  of  that  little  lake 
in  that  beautiful  park.  The  entrance  examination  requires 
a  considerable  knowledge  of  English  literature,  history  and 
geography,  mathematics,  Latin,  Greek,  and  of  one  of  the  two 
great  living  languages  besides  English  —  namely,  French  and 
German. 

There  is  no  limit  of  age  for  this  examination,  so  that  pupils 
of  sixteen  years  may  enter  the  college  at  the  same  time  as 
those  who  are  much  more  advanced  in  life.  They  gave  me 
one  example  of  a  student  of  sixty  years  of  age,  already  a 
grandmother,  who  presented  herself  and  was  admitted.  In 
this  country,  where  so  many  begin  the  work  of  life  over  and 
over  again,  young  girls  do  not  consider  it  extraordinary  to 
have  a  companion  of  that  age.  There  is  no  exclusive  principle 
as  regards  the  entrance  of  students.  They  may  be  poor  or 
rich,  daughters  of  millionaires  or  of  very  humble  parentage. 
So  long  as  they  are  morally  honorable,  no  one  asks  how  they  find 
the  means  to  pay  the  three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  per  annum, 
which  is  the  cost  of  board.  It  often  happens  that  a  young 
girl,  quite  ready  for  examination,  takes  a  place  as  a  cashier  or 
saleswoman  in  a  store,  as  secretary  in  a  hotel,  or  as  copyist, 
in  order  to  make  up  the  sum.  Others  serve  their  classmates 
as  dressmakers  or  milliners,  take  care  of  the  rooms  or  carry 
messages.  Here,  as  at  Harvard,  this  extra  work  is  not  only 


EDUCATION  311 

tolerated  but  esteemed.  It  is  a  species  of  instruction  in 
equality,  given  by  those  who  undertake  the  service  to  those 
who  can  do  without  it,  but  who  must  nevertheless  treat  their 
less  fortunate  companions  with  unvarying  politeness  and  sym 
pathy.  For  that  matter,  after  a  very  brief  journey  in  the  United 
States  one  is  no  longer  astonished  at  the  consequences  which 
the  democratic  idea  carries  with  it  when  constantly,  indefati- 
gably  applied.  Among  the  significant  facts  given  to  me  by 
the  former  cowboy,  whose  story  I  have  transcribed,  I  neglected 
to  note  this:  One  of  his  friends  and  he  had  hired  a  cook 
while  staying  in  a  Western  city,  and  this  woman  stipulated 
in  her  engagement  that  once  a  week  she  should  have  the  use 
of  her  master's  sitting-room  to  receive  her  friends. 

A  simple  little  fact  of  this  kind  proves  well  enough  how 
very  intact  mercenary  occupation  leaves  the  spirit  of  indi 
vidual  pride  among  those  who  undertake  it,  even  when  they 
are  by  extraction  and  education  really  inferior;  all  the  more 
so  when  there  is  really  no  inferiority.  On  the  other  hand, 
one  wonders  when  these  Wellesley  girls  find  time  for  supple 
mentary  work,  so  full  and  so  many  are  the  courses.  Here,  for 
example,  is  the  Greek  course,  which  a  pupil  in  her  first  year 
must  have  passed  in  order  to  become  a  sophomore,  —  cer 
tain  speeches  of  Lysias,  the  Apology  and  the  Crito  of  Plato, 
five  hundred  lines  of  the  Odyssey  of  Homer.  In  Latin 
she  has  studied  the  works  of  Cicero,  the  Germania  and 
Agricola  of  Tacitus,  and  one  or  two  books  of  Horace.  In 
German  she  has  mastered  the  general  history  of  literature,  the 
first  part  of  Faust  and  the  dramas  of  Schiller.  In  French 
her  studies  include  Le  Cid,  Horace,  Andromaque,  Le  Mis 
anthrope,  L1  Avare,  and,  among  modern  works,  L1  Abbe  Con- 
stantin.  As  regards  philosophy,  I  cannot  resist  translating 
some  of  the  lines  from  the  programme  of  a  class:  "Types  of 
ethical  theory;  psychological  investigation  of  the  laws  of  the 
human  mind  as  a  propaedeutic  basis  for  theories  to  account 


312  OUTRE-MER 

for  moral  experience  and  to  justify  ethic  methods.  The  doc 
trine  of  evolution  applied  to  account  for  the  motives  of  indi 
vidual  conduct  and  the  history  of  social  and  civil  institutions, 
customs,  etc. ;  the  various  types  of  ethics  in  the  phases  of 
moral  conduct  as  they  are  revealed  by  literature  and  art." 

Consider  that  to  this  work  is  added  what  may  be  called 
the  work  of  the  clubs.  All  the  students  are  members  of  some 
club  or  association  —  musical,  like  the  Beethoven;  literary, 
like  the  Shakespeare,  the  Phi-Sigma,  and  the  Zeta- Alpha; 
political,  like  the  Agora;  or  for  the  study  and  practice  of 
painting  or  sculpture,  like  the  Art  Society.  Finally,  nearly  all 
of  them  take  physical  exercise,  as  it  is  understood  in  America 
—  that  is  to  say,  as  a  calculated  and  carefully  studied  training. 
In  the  last  report  of  the  president  I  notice  six  tables  of  a 
strange  description,  which  reveal  in  all  frankness  the  tre 
mendously  realistic  spirit  by  which  this  College,  in  appear 
ance  so  paradoxical,  is  animated.  The  first  is  entitled  "Girth 
of  Chest."  It  is  a  series  of  comparative  columns  showing  the 
average  development  of  the  chest  obtained  by  twenty  students, 
taken  at  random,  after  five  months  of  training  in  the  gymna 
sium  and  on  the  river.  From  thirty-one  inches  these  young 
athletes  passed  to  thirty-three.  Two  parallel  columns  show  at 
a  glance  the  cessation  of  development  of  those  who  have  not 
exercised  their  muscles.  The  second  table  gives  similarly  the 
capacity  of  the  lungs,  the  third  the  strength  of  the  arms,  the 
fourth  the  strength  of  the  back,  the  fifth  the  depth  of  the  chest, 
the  sixth  the  breadth  of  the  shoulders. 

At  first  this  manner  of  treating  the  physiological  develop 
ment  of  young  girls,  as  trainers  might  treat  that  of  their 
horses,  appears  strange.  Then  you  reflect  that  these  young 
girls  who  come  here  for  instruction,  are  also  destined,  for  the 
most  part,  to  become  wives  and  mothers.  It  is,  therefore, 
advisable  that  they  should  be  injured  as  little  as  possible  by 
cerebral  overwork  and  that  their  physique  should  remain 


EDUCATION  313 

sound  in  spite  of  intellectual  effort.  That  object  being  ad 
mitted,  the  Americans  employ  the  most  efficacious  method 
simply  and  quietly.  All  that  remains  is  to  collect  statistics  of 
the  weight  of  the  children  to  which  these  young  women  will 
give  birth  when  married.  I  seem  to  hear  one  of  the  woman 
doctors  who  have  made  those  instructive  tables  answer,  "  Why 
not?" 

Between  a  woman's  university  like  Wellesley  and  a  military 
academy  like  West  Point  there  should  be,  one  would  think, 
the  same  difference  which  exists  with  us  between  the  Convent 
of  the  Sacred  Heart,  for  example,  and  the  School  of  St.  Cyr. 
A  priori we  say  to  ourselves  that  one  should  be  strictly  watched 
over  and  the  other  but  little.  The  Americans  think  exactly 
the  contrary.  Accustomed  as  they  are,  not  to  deal  in  words, 
but  to  see  things  as  they  are,  they  have  said  to  themselves 
that  independence  being,  in  their  world,  the  condition  of 
woman's  life,  the  colleges  for  young  girls  should  accustom 
their  students  to  the  practice  of  independence.  Inversely, 
discipline  being  the  essential  condition  of  military  life,  it 
has  seemed  to  them  that  a  school  of  officers  should  be  governed 
with  very  strict  severity,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  the 
cadets  of  West  Point  have  the  right  to  only  two  months'  holi 
day  in  their  four  years  of  study.  It  is  for  this  reason  also 
that  the  list  of  "offences"  punishable  by  bad  marks  is  as 
large  at  West  Point  as  it  is  small  at  Harvard  and  at  Wellesley. 
There  are  no  fewer  than  eight  categories  of  these.  Twelve  of 
the  first  receive  ten  bad  marks  each,  forty  of  the  second  re 
ceive  seven,  seventy-six  of  the  third  receive  five,  one  hundred 
and  five  of  the  fourth  receive  four,  and  so  until  we  reach  the 
forty-three  faults  of  the  eighth  category,  which  receive  one 
bad  mark  each. 

This  apparent  want  of  logic  in  a  system  which  shuts  up  the 
future  soldiers  to  a  discipline  such  as  is  applied  to  children, 


314  OUTRE-MER 

while  it  leaves  the  future  housewife  with  unlimited  latitude, 
is  in  truth  logical,  and,  if  you  wish  to  trace  the  ideal  portrait 
of  the  officer  of  a  democratic  army,  you  will  find  that  the 
Americans  have  succeeded  in  ascertaining  and  applying  with 
incomparable  common  sense  the  laws  that  apply  to  formation 
of  that  personage  so  abnormal  in  an  essentially  pacific  and 
commercial  republic. 

And,  first  of  all,  it  is  necessary  that  each  officer  should  be 
deeply,  closely  attached  to  the  democracy,  and  that  the  entire 
corps  should  be  permeated  with  the  democratic  spirit.  There 
are  numerous  examples  to  prove  that  an  army,  large  or  other 
wise,  has  always  a  tendency  to  insulate  itself  in  the  country, 
to  detach  itself  from  the  nation  and  to  make  itself  a  thing 
apart,  and  the  possibility  of  a  military  despotism  is  always  in 
the  future.  The  Americans  have  foreseen  this  danger,  and 
have  warded  it  off  by  such  a  singular  method  of  recruiting 
their  military  school  at  West  Point  that  at  first  sight  it  dis 
concerts  common  sense.  On  reflection  one  understands  its 
wisdom.  They  began  by  absolutely  suppressing  all  compe 
tition  for  entrance.  Each  electoral  district  which  nominates 
a  Congressman  has  a  right  to  name  a  candidate  for  a  cadet- 
ship,  and  to  that  Congressman  belongs  the  right  of  designat 
ing  the  candidate,  whom  the  War  Secretary  nominates  on  that 
presentation.  Ten  places  "at  large"  are  added,  which  the 
President  of  the  United  States  fills  at  his  will.  He  reserves 
them,  as  a  rule,  for  the  sons  of  soldiers  or  sailors.  On  this 
list  of  candidates  an  entrance  examination,  or  rather  one  of 
qualification,  exercises  a  kind  of  weeding  out.  Is  it  neces 
sary  to  add  that  politics  almost  wholly  determines  the  choice 
of  Congressmen?  Vainly  do  they  try  to  escape  therefrom,  as, 
for  example,  by  offering  for  competition  the  place  of  a  can 
didate  which  they  have  at  their  disposal.  In  fact,  one-third 
of  those  places  remain  unoccupied,  in  consequence  of  the 
deficiencies  of  the  youths  whom  the  Congressmen  present. 


EDUCATION  315 

The  person  from  whom  I  gather  these  details  and  those 
which  follow,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  officers  of  our  army, 
was  astonished  on  visiting  West  Point  at  such  an  anomaly, 
evidently  so  harmful  to  the  service. 

"There  are  in  it  two  advantages,"  was  the  reply  made  to 
him.  "  In  the  first  place,  this  recruiting  answers  to  the  spirit 
of  equality  which  forms  the  very  foundation  of  our  democracy; 
each  district  of  the  country  shares  the  expenses,  and  it  is, 
therefore,  right  that  each  should  share  the  benefits.  If  admis 
sion  to  West  Point  were  thrown  open  to  competition,  the  can 
didates  coming  from  New  England  would  necessarily  beat  the 
candidates  from  the  South  and  West,  where  the  average  of 
development  is  feebler.  In  the  second  place,  the  present 
procedure  singles  out  in  the  lowest  classes,  if  only  as  an 
electoral  bait,  boys  who,  without  this,  would  otherwise  remain 
destitute  of  instruction.  It  is  a  means,  among  thousands 
of  others,  of  giving  the  poorest  the  same  facilities  of  culture 
as  the  richest.  And  the  statistics  of  the  callings  exercised 
by  the  parents  of  the  pupils  testify  that  the  method  has  suc 
ceeded.  We  count  since  the  foundation,  eight  hundred  and 
twenty-seven  sons  of  farmers  and  planters,  four  hundred  and 
ninety-five  sons  of  merchants,  four  hundred  and  fifty-five  of 
lawyers,  two  hundred  and  seventy-one  of  doctors,  only  two 
hundred  and  forty-six  of  officers,  then  the  sons  of  all  trades 
—  butchers,  innkeepers,  footmen,  detectives,  house  servants, 
washerwomen.  There  are  many  chances  that  an  army  com 
manded  by  chiefs  who  to  such  an  extent  are  the  issue  of  the 
people,  will  not  become  an  army  of  pretorians;  there  are 
great  chances  also  that  those  officers,  thus  aided  by  the  Re 
public  in  the  struggle  for  life,  will  remain  faithful  to  the  Con 
stitution.  The  written  oath  of  allegiance  which  they  take  on 
their  entry  to  serve  the  federal  power  in  preference  to  their 
native  State  —  without  doubt  as  a  provision  in  the  case  of  a 
new  war,  like  that  of  the  North  and  South  —  will  cost  them 


316  OUTRE-MER 

nothing  to  keep.  The  United  States  have  done  too  much 
for  them." 

This  democratic  method  of  recruiting  was,  however,  not 
without  its  peril.  If  the  aristocratic  officer  is  a  danger  to 
liberty,  the  officer  without  education  is  a  danger  to  the  army. 
He  destroys  and  dissolves  it  by  his  mere  existence  —  at  least 
in  time  of  peace,  when  he  is  not  even  placed  in  a  position  to 
secure  for  himself  the  credit  of  personal  valor.  The  Ameri 
cans  have  well  understood  this  difficulty  of  origin,  if  we  may 
so  say,  and  they  have  not  overlooked  it.  Their  self-respect 
is  too  deep  for  them  to  accept,  without  trying  to  change,  a 
too  evident  inferiority,  and  they  have  remedied  it,  always 
after  their  habitual  method  of  accepting  facts.  Which  is  the 
strongest  of  the  influences  that  can  induce  a  rather  coarse 
youth  to  control  himself,  and  to  train  himself  in  the  direction 
of  refinement?  It  is  feminine  influence.  They  have  there 
fore  asked  themselves  by  what  means  they  could  bring  woman 
into  the  life  of  the  cadets,  and  have  bethought  themselves  of 
constructing  a  hotel  at  the  doors  of  the  school,  in  that  admir 
able  landscape  which  is  formed  by  the  Hudson  and  the  moun 
tains  —  the  river  with  its  deep  waters  flowing  at  the  foot  of  the 
plateau  on  which  is  West  Point,  and  turning  round  it  almost 
at  right  angles,  the  mountains  spreading  themselves  out 
behind,  their  slopes  covered  with  wild  forests,  and  in  the 
distance  the  vast  plains  where  Albany  lies.  Quite  naturally 
the  beauty  of  the  site,  the  comfort  of  the  establishment,  the 
facility  of  access,  and  the  purity  of  the  air  attract  a  great 
number  of  gentlemen  and  lady  visitors,  the  principal  amuse 
ment  of  whom  is  to  watch  the  cadets  going  through  their  exer 
cises  and  taking  part  in  the  entertainments  which  they  give. 

You  arrive.  The  sound  of  military  music  draws  you  to  the 
esplanade.  The  young  pupils  of  West  Point  are  executing  a 
manoeuvre  in  their  elegant  uniforms  of  light  gray,  with  a  triple 
row  of  gold  buttons.  They  go  and  come,  while  a  number  of 


EDUCATION  317 

ladies  watch  them  coming  and  going,  and  in  the  intervals  of 
the  exercise  you  see  them  leaving  the  ranks  to  salute  those 
they  know.  The  grass  lawns,  shaded  with  trees  and  gay  with 
flowers,  where  this  parade,  at  once  military  and  social,  takes 
place,  give  this  scene  the  appearance  of  a  garden  party  of  a 
unique  kind.  Those  same  ladies  which  grace  it  will  be  found 
this  evening  or  to-morrow  at  the  dances  which  the  cadets 
themselves  organize  three  times  a  week  in  summer  and  twice 
in  winter. 

The  observer  whom  I  have  already  quoted,  whose  official 
position  prevents  me  from  naming  him,  thus  described  one  of 
those  balls  to  me :  — 

"An  invitation  was  sent  to  all  the  visitors  at  the  hotel.  I 
took  care  not  to  miss  it.  The  entertainment  lasted  two  hours, 
from  eight  to  ten.  I  was  standing  in  the  alcove  of  the  window, 
by  the  entrance,  and,  thanks  to  my  incognito,  I  heard  the  con 
versations  of  the  cadets,  who  came  to  cool  themselves,  without 
paying  any  attention  to  me.  Not  a  dubious  word  was  uttered. 
The  cadets  introduced  one  another  to  the  girls.  When  one 
of  them  did  not  dance  a  member  of  the  committee  wearing  a 
red  sash,  the  badge  of  service,  went  and  fetched  a  disengaged 
youth  and  brought  him  to  her.  From  time  to  time  a  cadet 
and  a  young  girl  would  leave  the  hall  and  promenade  in  the 
dark  for  ten  minutes  or  so.  It  seemed  quite  natural,  and  no 
one  smiled  at  it.  Everything  went  on  with  ease  and  dignity." 

Respect  for  woman  and  the  refinement  caused  by  that  re 
spect,  —  these  are  the  means  which  the  Americans  have  boldly 
employed  to  make  those  youths,  recruited  at  random,  the 
"gentlemen"  that  officers  must  be.  Regarding  technical  in 
struction  they  have  followed  their  habitual  method,  which 
consists  in  bringing  the  mind  into  direct  contact  with  the 
object.  Thus  they  have  reduced  theoretic  teaching  to  a 
minimum.  During  three  years  out  of  four  there  is  not  a 
single  class  of  that  kind.  Each  pupil  receives  in  September, 


318  OUTRE-MER 

the  period  at  which  the  scholastic  year  commences,  pamphlets 
containing  the  matters  which  he  must  study.  He  prepares 
these  tasks  by  himself,  and  then  the  professor  questions  him. 
There  are  eight  or  ten  pupils  in  a  room,  with  a  master  who 
knows  them  all,  and  who  is  with  them  from  week  to  week. 
The  exercise  regularly  done,  the  youths  are  enabled  each 
evening  to  apply  what  they  have  studied,  and  thus  the  abstract 
work  of  the  day  is  completed.  As  soon  as  the  fine  weather 
comes,  that  is  to  say,  from  the  first  days  of  June  to  the  first 
days  of  September,  even  the  abstract  teaching  ceases.  The 
cadets  camp  out.  It  is  an  object  lesson  which  they  receive 
for  three  months  in  the  open  air  and  under  conditions  as 
analogous  as  possible  to  those  which  would  exist  in  real  war. 
Of  their  four  years  at  West  Point  they  have,  therefore,  spent 
one  entirely  as  though  they  had  been  with  a  regiment,  but 
in  a  regiment  without  promiscuity,  without  dangerous  com 
panionship,  and  without  the  fetters  of  discipline.  With  great 
wisdom  the  "adjutant"  has  been  suppressed  at  West  Point; 
to  the  future  officer  he  is  nothing  more  than  a  semi-superior. 
Graded  cadets  or  real  officers  command  with  a  fulness  of 
authority  which  carries  with  it  at  once  more  rigor  and  less 
minutiae.  Thus,  though  the  code  of  offences  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  extremely  strict,  punishments  are  rare. 

When  the  question  is  of  those  machines  for  forming  a  cer 
tain  kind  of  man,  which  we  call  a  special  school,  the  result 
gives  the  measure  of  the  value  of  the  method.  With  its 
strangely  varied  recruiting,  with  its  individual  education,  with 
its  instruction,  which  would  appear  very  commonplace  to  one 
of  the  ordinary  pupils  of  our  schools,  West  Point  turns  out, 
according  to  the  best  judges,  an  excellent  corps  of  student 
officers.  Whatever  be  the  arm  of  the  service  chosen,  the 
young  man  who  leaves  the  academy  must  pass  through  a 
school  of  application.  But  he  arrives  there  sturdy  and  bal- 


EDUCATION  319 

anced,  trained  to  bodily  exercises  by  gymnastics,  .fencing,  rid 
ing,  and,  above  all,  by  camping  out  in  the  open  air,  well 
prepared  for  a  superior  education,  by  the  positive  apprentice 
ship  which  he  has  served.  His  teachers  have  taught  him 
nothing  which  he  has  not  understood.  Instead  of  making 
him,  as  in  many  of  the  military  schools  of  Europe,  a  scholar, 
whom  they  will  afterward  ask  to  descend  into  practical  details 
of  artillery  and  engineering,  they  have  made  him  a  manipulator 
of  cannons  and  a  worker  in  the  trenches,  knowing  that  he  can 
become  a  scholar  later,  if  he  have  the  tastes  and  aptitudes, 
which,  however,  is  scarcely  probable.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
the  United  States  found  it  necessary  to  organize  once  again  an 
immense  improvised  army  as  it  did  thirty-five  years  ago,  they 
would  find  in  the  former  pupils  of  this  democratic  and  living 
academy  precisely  the  kind  of  officers  whom  they  would  need 
to  put  the  machine  in  motion. 

American  patriotism  has  one  of  its  centres  in  this  College, 
the  only  one  in  the  country  which  works  in  the  opposite  direc 
tion  to  universal  decentralization,  and  in  the  direction  of  a 
deep  federal  unity.  This  displacement  of  object  and  method, 
which  testifies  once  again  to  American  adaptability,  shows  also 
to  what  a  degree  these  great  realists  are  exempt  from  the  evil 
of  doctrines,  so  pernicious  to  countries  where  traditions  obtain, 
and  how  much  the  servitude  of  ready-made  ideas  is  repugnant 
to  them.  Here  again  you  find  the  great  feature  of  the  national 
character,  that  active  will,  which  holds  itself  in  the  face  of  the 
social  world  as  it  will  hold  itself  face  to  face  with  the  physical 
world,  fearless  in  assertion  and  in  daring.  It  is  the  necessary 
rhythm  of  all  effective  resolution  —  the  exact  "lucidity"  of  a 
glance  over  given  conditions  and  their  acceptance  and  adjust 
ment  in  view  of  a  no  less  lucid  project.  Be  it  a  question  of  a 
bank,  of  a  bridge,  of  a  railroad,  or  of  a  school,  American  energy 
proceeds  always  in  the  same  manner.  And  the  success  attained 
shows  that  the  procedure  is  good. 


320  OUTRE-MER 

In  the  word  "  lucidity  "  we  sum  up  this  short  inquiry,  which 
can  evidently  be  generalized,  but  only  with  much  reserve. 
Lucidity  being  the  aim,  and  the  means,  it  is  very  probable  that 
these  same  characteristics  would  meet  in  all  the  other  enter 
prises  of  public  or  private  instruction,  and  in  consequence  there 
would  be  that  fundamental  identity  of  education  and  life  which 
forms  the  common  foundation  of  the  four  groups  of  instruction, 
of  which  I  have  sketched  the  plan.  If  you  search  a  little  into 
this  formula,  it  seems  that  many  of  the  qualities  and  the  defects 
of  this  civilization  are  illuminated,  and  also  several  very  deep 
and  too  little  known  laws  of  human  nature.  And  in  the  first 
place,  this  identity  of  education  and  life  explains  the  prodigious 
development  of  the  whole  of  this  vast  country,  in  which  each 
new  generation  on  reaching  maturity  has  no  further  apprentice 
ship  to  serve.  It  is  a  common  saying  with  us,  heard  even  in 
the  speeches  at  the  distribution  of  our  prizes,  that  for  collegians 
a  second  period  of  education  is  about  to  begin  with  their  liberty. 
In  fact,  a  youth  of  twenty  years  in  France,  who  has  brought  his 
literary  and  scientific  studies  up  to  such  a  point  that  he  is 
enabled  to  take  his  degree,  is  in  no  way  equipped  to  earn 
his  living,  still  less  to  make  his  own  fortune  or  that  of  his 
family.  Quite  a  new  moral  and  intellectual  drill  is  necessary 
to  train  him  to  face  the  realities  of  his  surroundings.  The 
decadence  of  our  secondary  education  —  to  speak  of  nothing 
else  —  is  enormous.  In  America  that  decadence  does  not 
exist.  It  cannot  exist,  and  the  type  of  the  declasse  is  as 
yet  such  a  stranger  to  Americans  that  he  is,  I  think,  quite 
incomprehensible  to  them.  When  his  eighteenth  or  twentieth 
year  has  been  reached,  a  man  in  New  York,  Boston,  or  Chicago 
is  a  made  man.  He  will,  without  doubt,  after  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  of  struggling,  have  more  experience,  a  wider  scope,  and 
a  greater  authority.  But  it  will  be  only  a  difference  of  degree. 
From  the  day  he  leaves  school  or  the  university  he  is  complete, 
prepared  for  the  struggle  of  life. 


EDUCATION  321 

The  woman  is  in  the  same  condition ;  and  this  is  why  you 
seldom  meet  in  the  United  States  those  really  young  faces,  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  understand  the  term,  those  faces  in  which 
there  is  uncertainty,  something  unfinished,  a  beginning,  a  mere 
sketch  of  the  individual,  who  is,  as  it  were,  being  fashioned 
and  modified. 

Age  is  recognized  in  the  freshness  of  the  skin,  the  brightness 
of  the  eyes  and  the  teeth,  the  growth  of  the  beard,  the  slender- 
ness  of  the  figure ;  and  one  says,  "  That  young  man  is  not 
twenty-two  years  of  age,  that  young  girl  is  not  twenty  years 
old."  But  the  faces  of  both  these  young  persons  are  those  of 
persons  who  are  thirty  or  forty  years  old,  and  their  practical 
activity  is  just  as  mature. 

This  precocity  of  initiative  is  indubitably  one  of  the  benefits 
of  the  method,  at  least  from  the  social  point  of  view.  Another, 
which  I  have  noted  in  the  course  of  this  analysis,  is  the  greater 
elasticity  of  the  local  centres,  each  town  raising  its  future  citi 
zens  according  to  its  needs,  and,  so  to  say,  according  to  its 
measure.  With  us  a  cabinet  minister,  taking  out  his  watch, 
could  tell  you  what  all  the  rhetoricians  in  all  the  academies  of 
France  were  doing  at  the  time. 

In  America  you  have  as  many  systems  of  education  as  you 
have  towns ;  and  it  is  certainly  due  to  this  fact  that  towns  quite 
near  to  one  another,  such  as  New  York,  Boston,  Philadelphia, 
and  Baltimore,  each  retain  that  originality  which  is  so  distinct 
and  that  patriotism  which  is  so  separate.  Therein  lies,  for  a 
democracy,  a  condition  which  is  a  sine  qua  non  of  political 
health ;  and  from  that  point  of  view,  again,  American  education, 
by  working  in  the  direction  of  local  vitality,  shows  itself  a  supe 
rior  machine  for  producing  this  healthy  state.  Democracy  is, 
in  fact,  according  to  definition,  the  government  of  the  people 
by  the  people ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  the  empire  of  the  majority. 
In  centralized  countries  the  power  which  such  a  majority  gives 
to  its  representatives  is  too  great,  too  absolute.  They  are 


322  OUTRE-MER 

capable  of  penetrating  too  deeply  into  individual  life ;  and 
past  and  contemporaneous  history  proves  that  in  fact  they 
have  always  so  penetrated,  and  that  republics  thus  established 
are  Csesarisms  of  long  or  short  duration,  but  always  Csesarisms. 

The  tyranny  of  a  ministry  two  months  in  power,  or  that  of 
an  emperor  who  reigns  eighteen  years,  is  always  a  tyranny. 
One  of  the  greatest  thinkers  of  France  at  the  present  moment, 
and  one  of  the  least  known,  M.  Louis  Menard,  has  given  its 
formula  in  the  following  admirable  aphorism  :  "  A  centralized 
republic  is  not  capable  of  living.  Monarchy  is  the  only  logical 
form  of  unity." 

The  federative  system,  which  tends  always  to  scatter  the 
power  of  the  local  authorities,  has  the  advantage  of  giving  to 
the  individual  a  far  larger  number  of  probabilities  of  inde 
pendence  and  of  rendering  almost  impossible  the  rise  of  a 
dictature.  If  the  organization  of  socialism  continues  to  extend 
in  the  United  States,  as  is  very  probable,  one  of  the  surest 
obstacles  to  its  despotism  —  for  the  fact  that  it  is  collective 
does  not  render  its  despotism  any  less  hateful  or  iniquitous — 
will  be  the  vigor  of  the  municipal  centres. 

It  is,  therefore,  true  to  say  that  among  the  causes  which 
contribute  to  augment  that  vigor,  and  which  tend  to  preserve 
the  country  from  revolution  from  below,  as  well  as  from  subju 
gation  from  above,  the  school,  such  as  it  is  understood  in 
America,  represents  perhaps  the  most  powerful. 

It  is  a  conservative  force,  upon  which  the  country  will  lean 
in  the  day  of  danger ;  and  as  the  government  of  America  is 
at  one  and  the  same  time  an  instrument  of  progress  and  con 
servatism,  we  can  say  that  this  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
machines  of  this  country  which  has  invented  so  many. 

There  are,  however,  in  this  system  of  education  some  very 
serious  inconveniences,  which  are  to  be  recognized  in  the  most 
conspicuous  defects  of  that  society.  Words  fail  to  express 
them  well,  so  deficient  in  certain  delicate  shades  is  the  psycho- 


EDUCATION  323 

logical  vocabulary,  made,  as  it  is,  for  common  use  and  observa 
tion.  For  want  of  more  intelligible  words  I  will  say  that  this 
education  does  not  give  a  large  enough  place  to  the  uncon 
scious.  It  is  too  precise,  too  positive,  too  clear.  It  lacks 
uncertainty  and,  to  put  it  in  a  word,  it  is  too  utilitarian.  The 
result  is  that  this  immense  civilization  has  the  appearance  of 
having  been  manufactured,  of  being  maintained  by  an  effort  — 
in  fact,  of  working  after  the  manner  of  a  machine  continuingly 
wound  up.  We  do  not  feel  instinct  enough,  the  almost  invol 
untary  expansion  of  a  force  which  ignores  itself.  It  is  a 
strange  thing  that  this  country,  in  which  everything  is  done  by 
the  people  and  for  the  people,  has  none  of  the  characteristics 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  consider  as  the  mark  proper  of 
the  popular  soul.  Naivete  and  timidity,  clumsiness  and  credu 
lous  simplicity,  are  never  found  in  this  civilization.  It  seems 
to  have  no  undercurrent,  nothing  taken  for  granted,  for  the 
reason  that  everything  is  actual,  realized,  and  grown  up.  This 
is  why,  in  spite  of  that  immense  culture,  and  what  is  better  still, 
that  appetite  for  culture,  there  is  as  yet  no  purely  American 
art,  no  purely  American  literature,  no  purely  American  poetry. 
The  great  artists,  the  great  men  of  literature,  and  the  great 
poets  in  the  United  States  —  their  names  are  known  —  remain 
exceptional  and  solitary.  They  do  not  form  part  of  the  na 
tional  life,  precisely  because  that  life  is  too  voluntary,  too  self- 
conscious,  too  intense,  and  education  is  constantly  at  work 
rendering  still  more  intense  that  self-consciousness  and  that 
will. 

Looking  into  it  more  deeply  we  recognize  that  in  this  the 
Americans  illustrate  one  of  the  most  inevitable  yet  most  un 
looked-for  consequences  of  the  democratic  idea.  With  all 
nations,  poetry,  to  take  that  word  in  its  broadest  sense,  has 
always  drawn  its  sap  from  the  hearts  of  the  people.  What  a 
Homer,  an  ^Eschylus,  a  Virgil,  a  Dante,  and  a  Shakespeare 
express  is  the  ideal  elaborated  during  centuries  by  the  ignorant 


324  OUTRE-MER 

and  the  illiterate,  by  sufferers  too,  by  the  great  unknown  crowd 
of  workers  ;  by  artists  and  soldiers,  laborers  and  sailors,  country 
women  and  women  of  the  suburbs.  Giotto  painting  his 
frescoes,  Michael  Angelo  carving  his  marbles,  were  sustained 
by  an  obscure  Italy  beneath  them,  which  did  not  know  itself, 
which  did  not  understand  itself,  but  which  had  a  distant 
glimpse  of  the  unattainable,  a  far-away  and  vague  ideal.  It  is 
the  "  mystery  "  enveloped  in  that  unconscious  life  of  the  peo 
ple,  which  completes  itself  and  takes  form  in  the  consciousness 
of  these  great  men  —  mystery  made  up  of  misfortunes  and 
errors,  of  blind  efforts  and  baffled  ardor. 

There  is  a  deal  of  individual  suffering,  of  defeated  aspira 
tions,  an  immense  and  tragic  failure  of  countless  life-histories 
in  that  embodiment  of  a  shade  of  feeling,  sublime  or  delicate, 
tragic  or  touching,  which  we  call  a  work  of  art.  Those  suffer 
ings,  those  failures,  that  ignorance,  are  just  what  democracy  is 
striving  to  do  away  with  in  the  world.  It  desires  that  all  should 
have  their  part  in  the  joy  of  living,  of  understanding,  of  express 
ing  themselves.  It  is  a  legitimate,  a  generous  ambition,  but  it 
seems  irreconcilable  with  the  development  of  a  certain  idealism 
which  is  but  the  revenge  of  the  mutilated  desires  of  a  race. 
Nemesis,  the  goddess  of  fatal  compensations,  is  found  here 
again,  as  in  all  phases  of  human  life.  When  we  try  to  define 
the  intelligence  too  closely  we  mutilate  it.  When  we  limit 
facts  too  severely,  restrict  them  too  much,  handle  them  too 
learnedly,  we  identify  ourselves  too  much  with  them,  and  the 
power  of  pure  thought  is  by  so  much  diminished.  Purposing 
too  strongly,  we  destroy  in  ourselves  instinct  and  replace  it  by 
mechanism.  Making  instruction  and  education  too  general, 
we  interfere  with  the  deep  sources  of  the  soul  of  the  people, 
whose  reserves  of  unconscious  poetry  form  the  mystic  aliment 
of  the  future  masterpieces  of  art  and  letters.  If  American 
civilization  has  up  to  now  lacked  that  aesthetic  geniality,  it  cer 
tainly  seems  that  the  fault  of  it  lies  here,  and  that  by  one  of 


EDUCATION  325 

those  ironies  in  which  nature  delights,  this  colossal  effort  at  self- 
cultivation,  this  fever  of  education,  account  for  a  great  deal  of 
it.  The  future,  however,  may  give  a  denial  to  this  hypothesis. 

The  Americans  have  the  right  to  say  that  they  have  at  least 
realized,  through  a  most  beneficent  audacity,  the  most  legitimate 
purpose  of  democracy,  the  indefinite  multiplication  of  the 
chances  of  well-being  and  education.  A  Cambridge  professor 
expressed  this  in  a  touching  manner  one  afternoon  when  we 
were  in  his  library  looking  at  the  engravings  of  the  "Job"  of 
William  Blake,  the  remarkable  painter-poet,  the  precursor  of 
Rossetti  and  of  Morris.  Outside  the  snow  was  falling  over  the 
pines,  with  their  black  boughs,  and  over  the  bare  branches  of 
the  other  trees.  Around  us  a  score  of  scattered  engravings  and 
as  many  pictures  brought  dear,  sunny  Italy  into  that  dim  and 
silent  Northern  corner.  My  host  had  just  expressed  to  me  in 
the  presence  of  those  objects  —  silent  witnesses  of  past  years  of 
travel  —  his  longing  for  a  land  of  beauty,  where  there  are  fewer 
machines,  fewer  factories,  fewer  newspapers,  fewer  schools,  but 
touches  of  art  everywhere,  and  everywhere  traces  of  that  innate 
poetry  which  you  find  on  a  sunlit  morning  on  a  quay  in  Florence, 
on  a  street  in  Pisa,  at  a  turning  of  a  road  in  Sienna. 

"  And  yet,"  he  said,  "  I  would  not  be  ungrateful  to  my  coun 
try.  I  meet  with  many  things  which  shock  me."  (He  em 
ployed  the  more  delicate  expression,  "  which  are  offensive  to 
me.")  "  But  in  return  I  feel  that  a  great  number  of  people 
are  well  off.  I  think  that  on  this  immense  continent  there  are 
few  lives  which  have  been  absolute  failures.  That  is  an  incon 
testable  benefit  of  our  democracy,  and  it  is  well  worth  while  to 
accept  all  its  conditions." 


VIII 

AMERICAN   PLEASURES 

HAVING  exaggerated  his  nervous  and  voluntary  tension  to  the 
pitch  of  abuse,  almost  to  vice,  it  is  impossible  that  the  Ameri 
can  should  amuse  himself  as  we  Latins  do,  who  hardly  conceive 
of  pleasure  without  a  certain  relaxation  of  the  senses,  mingled 
with  softness  and  luxury.  The  human  animal  remains  the 
same  in  those  manifestations  which  are  apparently  most 
opposed,  and  in  our  amusements  we  merely  extend  that 
which  makes  the  ordinary  foundation  of  our  life.  The  anec 
dote  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena  has  often  been  quoted  —  that 
he  could  not  sit  down  at  the  whist  table  without  at  once  trying 
to  win  a  rubber.  With  the  cards  in  his  hand  he  was  once  more 
the  audacious  and  reckless  player  who  said  one  day,  "  The  prince 
was  in  me,  in  my  indomitable  spirit,  which,  in  its  ascendency, 
put  all  Europe  at  my  feet.  The  chances  of  destiny,  it  is  true, 
placed  me  on  the  throne.  But  even  in  a  cloister  I  should  have 
always  been  the  Emperor."  He  was  so  still,  in  the  unconscious 
fever  of  domination  which  impelled  him  to  take  all  the  tricks 
on  the  pitiful  green  cloth  of  his  house  of  exile.  It  is  the 
symbol  of  pleasure  of  all  people  and  in  all  races. 

This  profound  unity  of  national  character  is  not  recognized 
at  the  first  glance,  but  a  little  analysis  quickly  reveals  it.  In 
France,  for  example,  the  dominant  feature  of  national  char 
acter  appears  to  be  excessive  sociability.  It  began  by  creating 
among  us  the  misuse  of  drawing-room  life,  and  consequently 
the  misuse  of  conversation,  and  then  the  taste  for  subtle,  in 
genious,  and  abstract  ideas.  An  entire  modification  of  political 

326 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  327 

spirit  followed,  and,  through  the  sad  bankruptcy  of  1789,  arose 
a  system  founded  on  pure  logic,  in  which  the  State  devours  all 
the  living  force  of  the  country,  absorbs  all  its  individuals,  and 
exhausts  its  impulse  to  action.  As  a  result  of  this  same  excess 
of  sociability  we  find  a  very  low  order  of  popular  amusements 
and  a  habit  of  lounging  in  the  cafes,  which  is  so  striking  to  one 
arriving  from  an  Anglo-Saxon  country,  and  the  privation  of 
which  was  for  Valles  the  most  insupportable  form  of  his  exile 
in  London.  This  same  taste  for  sociability  makes  us  like  theatri 
cal  pieces  which  are  light,  flimsy,  and  easy  to  understand,  and 
which  touch  in  an  easy  and  clever  way  upon  the  manners 
of  the  day  and  the  petty  social  follies  which  have  already  been 
commented  upon  in  the  conversations  of  drawing-room  and 
clubs.  This  sociability  is  found  again  in  our  better  newspapers, 
filled  with  chatty  literature,  if  we  may  so  call  it ;  in  our  popular 
fetes,  with  their  open-air  balls  and  their  gossiping  familiarity, 
and  at  another  pole,  in  our  conception  of  gallantry. 

The  "  woman  of  the  town  "  with  us  is  not  only  the  paid 
creature  who  ministers  to  the  lewdness  of  man.  If  only  she 
is  in  the  least  witty,  graceful,  and  lively,  she  very  soon  becomes 
the  comrade  in  whose  company  the  man  lingers  with  pleasure, 
whom,  if  he  is  free,  he  installs  in  his  home,  and  whom  he  will 
end  by  marrying.  All  these  phenomena,  taken  together,  reveal 
the  close  and  secret  tie  which  binds  them  to  one  another. 

An  essayist,  knowing  the  United  States  thoroughly,  would 
have  no  trouble  in  establishing  a  similar  co-relation  between 
American  ideas,  labors,  and  pleasures.  Their  pleasures  seem, 
in  fact,  to  imply,  like  their  ideas  and  their  labors,  something 
unrestrained  and  immoderate,  a  very  vigorous  excitement, 
always  bordering  on  violence,  or,  rather,  on  roughness  and 
restlessness.  Even  in  his  diversions  the  American  is  too  active 
and  too  self-willed.  Unlike  the  Latin,  who  amuses  himself  by 
relaxation,  he  amuses  himself  by  intensity,  and  this  is  the  case 
whatever  be  the  nature  of  his  amusements,  for  he  has  very 


328  OUTRE-MER 

coarse  and  very  refined  ones.  But  a  few  sketches  from  nature 
will  explain  better  than  all  the  theories  that  kind  of  nervousness, 
and,  as  it  were,  fitful  sharpness  in  amusement,  if  we  can  here 
use  that  word  which  is  synonymous  with  two  of  the  least 
American  things  in  the  world,  —  unconstraint  and  repose. 

The  most  vehement  of  those  pleasures  and  the  most  deeply 
national  are  those  of  sport.  Interpret  the  word  in  its  true  sense, 
and  you  will  find  in  it  nothing  of  the  meaning  which  we  French 
attach  to  it,  who  have  softened  the  term  in  adopting  it,  and 
who  make  it  consist  above  all  of  elegance  and  dexterity.  For 
the  American,  "  sport "  has  ever  in  it  some  danger,  for  it  does 
not  exist  without  the  conception  of  contest  and  daring.  Thus 
with  yachting,  which  to  us  means  pleasure  cruises  along  the 
coasts,  means  to  him  voyages  around  the  world,  braving  the 
tempest  and  the  vast  solitudes  of  the  Atlantic,  or  else  rivalries 
of  speed  in  which  everything  is  taken  into  consideration  except 
human  life.  While  I  was  visiting  one  of  the  private  yachts  at 
Newport  at  anchor  in  the  harbor,  I  noticed  an  entire  arsenal  of 
guns  and  pikes  hanging  in  one  of  the  state-rooms  between  decks. 
"  It  is  in  case  we  should  go  into  Chinese  seas  and  should  meet 
pirates,"  said  the  proprietor  of  this  dainty  travelling  toy.  An 
other,  discussing  before  me  the  probabilities  of  speed  between 
the  Vigilant  and  Valkyrie,  two  sailing  yachts  whose  names  were 
for  weeks  last  autumn  the  subject  of  every  conversation,  said, 
coolly,  "  We  had  to  make  the  bulwark  too  low ;  we  shall  be 
lucky  if  we  do  not  lose  several  men."  There  was  no  more 
emotion  in  that  statement  than  vain  boasting  in  the  other.  It 
was  the  natural  expression  of  an  energy  that  instinctively  likes  to 
associate  the  idea  of  a  play  with  that  of  a  peril,  and  to  which 
a  little  tragic  risk  is  as  the  necessary  condiment  to  its  most 
innocent  festivities. 

Among  the  distractions  of  sport,  none  has  been  more  fashion 
able  for  several  years  past  than  football.  I  was  present  last 
autumn,  in  the  peaceful  and  quiet  city  of  Cambridge,  at  a 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  329 

game  between  the  champions  of  Harvard  College  —  the  "  team," 
as  they  say  here  —  and  the  champions  of  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania.  I  must  go  back  in  thought  to  my  journey  in 
Spain  to  recall  a  popular  fever  equal  to  that  which  throbbed 
along  the  road  between  Boston  and  the  arena  where  the  match 
was  to  take  place.  The  electric  cars  followed  one  another  at 
intervals  of  a  minute,  filled  with  passengers,  who,  seated  or 
standing,  or  hanging  on  the  steps,  crowded,  pushed,  crushed 
one  another.  Although  the  days  of  November  are  cruelly  cold 
under  a  Massachusetts  sky,  the  place  of  contest,  as  at  Rome  for 
the  gladiatorial  combats,  was  in  a  sort  of  open-air  enclosure. 
A  stone's  throw  away  from  Memorial  Hall  and  the  other  build 
ings  of  the  University,  wooden  stands  were  erected.  On  these 
stands  were  perhaps  fifteen  thousand  spectators,  and  in  the 
immense  quadrilateral  hemmed  in  by  the  stands  were  two 
teams  composed  of  eleven  youths  each  waiting  for  the  signal 
to  begin. 

What  a  tremor  in  that  crowd,  composed  not  of  the  lower 
classes,  but  of  well-to-do  people,  and  how  the  excitement  in 
creased  as  time  went  on  !  All  held  in  their  hands  small, 
red  flags  and  wore  tufts  of  red  flowers.  Crimson  is  the  color  of 
the  Harvard  boys.  Although  a  movement  of  feverish  excite 
ment  ran  through  this  crowd,  it  was  not  enough  for  the  enthusi 
asts  of  the  game.  Propagators  of  enthusiasm,  students  with 
unbearded,  deeply-lined  faces,  passed  between  the  benches 
and  still  further  increased  the  ardor  of  the  public  by  uttering 
the  war-cry  of  the  University,  the  "  Rah  !  rah  !  rah  !  "  thrice 
repeated,  which  terminates  in  the  frenzied  call,  "  Haaar-vard." 
The  partisans  of  the  "  Pennsy's  "  replied  by  a  similar  cry,  and  in 
the  distance,  above  the  palings  of  the  enclosure,  we  could  see 
clusters  of  other  spectators,  too  poor  to  pay  the  entrance  fee, 
who  had  climbed  into  the  branches  of  the  leafless  trees,  their 
faces  outlined  against  the  autumn  sky  with  the  daintiness  of 
the  pale  heads  in  Japanese  painted  fans. 


330  OUTRE-MER 

The  signal  is  given  and  the  play  begins.  It  is  a  fearful  game, 
which  by  itself  would  suffice  to  indicate  the  differences  between 
the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Latin  world  —  a  game  of  young  bull 
dogs  brought  up  to  bite,  to  rush  upon  the  quarry ;  the  game 
of  a  race  made  for  wild  attack,  for  violent  defence,  for  implacable 
conquests  and  desperate  struggles.  With  their  leather  vests, 
with  the  Harvard  sleeves  of  red  cloth,  and  the  Pennsylvania 
blue  and  white  vests  and  sleeves,  so  soon  to  be  torn  —  with  the 
leather  gaiters  to  protect  their  shins,  with  their  great  shoes  and 
their  long  hair  floating  around  their  pale  and  flushed  faces, 
these  scholarly  athletes  are  at  once  admirable  and  frightful  to  see 
when  once  the  demon  of  contest  has  entered  into  them.  At 
each  extremity  of  the  field  is  a  goal,  representing,  at  the  right 
end,  one  of  the  teams,  at  the  left  the  other.  The  entire  object 
is  to  throw  an  enormous  leather  ball,  which  the  champion  of 
one  or  the  other  side  holds  in  turn.  It  is  in  waiting  for  this 
throw  that  all  the  excitement  of  this  almost  ferocious  amuse 
ment  is  concentrated.  He  who  holds  the  ball  is  there,  bent 
forward,  his  companions  and  his  adversaries  likewise  bent  down 
around  him  in  the  attitude  of  beasts  of  prey  about  to  spring. 
All  of  a  sudden  he  runs  to  throw  the  ball,  or  else  with  a  wildly 
rapid  movement  he  hands  it  to  another,  who  rushes  off  with  it. 
All  depends  on  stopping  him. 

The  roughness  with  which  they  seize  the  bearer  of  the  ball 
is  impossible  to  imagine  without  having  witnessed  it.  He  is 
grasped  by  the  middle  of  the  body,  by  the  head,  by  the  legs,  by 
the  feet.  He  rolls  over  and  his  assailants  with  him,  and  as  they 
fight  for  the  ball  and  the  two  sides  come  to  the  rescue,  it  be 
comes  a  heap  of  twenty-two  bodies  tumbling  on  top  of  one 
another,  like  an  inextricable  knot  of  serpents  with  human  heads. 
This  heap  writhes  on  the  ground  and  tugs  at  itself.  One  sees 
faces,  hair,  backs,  or  legs  appearing  in  a  monstrous  and  agitated 
melee.  Then  this  murderous  knot  unravels  itself  and  the  ball, 
thrown  by  the  most  agile,  bounds  away  and  is  again  followed 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  331 

with  the  same  fury.  It  continually  happens  that,  after  one  of 
those  frenzied  entanglements,  one  of  the  combatants  remains 
on  the  field  motionless,  incapable  of  rising,  so  much  has  he 
been  hit,  pressed,  crushed,  thumped. 

A  doctor  whose  duty  it  is  to  look  after  the  wounded  arrives 
and  examines  him.  You  see  those  skilled  hands  shaking  a 
foot,  a  leg,  rubbing  the  sides,  washing  a  face,  sponging  the 
blood  which  streams  from  the  forehead,  the  eyes,  the  nose, 
the  mouth.  A  compassionate  comrade  assists  in  the  business 
and  takes  the  head  of  the  fainting  champion  on  his  knee. 
Sometimes  the  unlucky  player  must  be  carried  away.  More 
frequently,  however,  he  recovers  his  senses,  stretches  himself, 
rouses  up,  and  ends  by  scrambling  to  his  feet.  He  makes  a 
few  steps,  leaning  on  the  friendly  shoulder,  and  no  sooner  is  he 
able  to  walk  than  the  game  begins  afresh,  and  he  joins  in  again 
with  a  rage  doubled  by  pain  and  humiliation. 

If  the  roughness  of  this  terrible  sport  was  for  the  spectators 
only  the  occasion  of  a  nervous  excitement  of  a  few  hours,  the 
young  athletes  would  not  give  themselves  up  to  it  with  this 
enthusiasm  which  makes  them  accept  the  most  painful,  some 
times  the  most  dangerous,  of  trainings.  A  mother  said  to  me, 
speaking  of  her  son,  who  is  not  fourteen  years  old  :  "  He 
adores  football.  He  is  already  captain  of  his  eleven.  I  should 
not  be  anxious  if  he  never  played  against  any  but  little  gentle 
men,  but  they  have  a  mania  for  playing  against  common  people. 
It  is  in  such  struggles  that  dangerous  accidents  are  always 
to  be  feared."  "What  will  you  have?"  replied  one  of  the 
professors  of  Harvard.  "  In  the  frenzy  of  the  game  they  deal 
each  other  some  hard  blows,  it  is  true,  and  it  is  true,  above  all, 
that  the  heroes  of  matches  like  that  of  to-day  are  victims. 
The  training  is  too  intense.  The  nervous  system  cannot  bear 
up  against  it.  But  the  feats  of  the  champions  keep  the  game 
fashionable.  Hence  all  the  small  boys  in  the  remotest  parts  of 
America  take  up  this  exercise,  and  thus  athletes  are  formed." 


332  OUTRE-MER 

He  was  putting  into  abstract  form  that  which  is  the  instinct  of 
the  American  crowd,  an  instinct  which  does  not  reason  and 
which  shows  itself  in  very  strange  ways.  During  the  contest, 
which  I  have  attempted  to  describe,  I  heard  a  distinguished 
and  refined  woman,  next  to  whom  I  was  seated,  crying  out, 
"  Beauty  ! "  at  the  sight  of  rushes  that  sent  five  or  six  boys 
sprawling  on  the  ground. 

No  sooner  are  such  matches  as  these  in  preparation  than  the 
portraits  of  the  various  players  are  in  all  the  papers.  The 
incidents  of  the  game  are  described  in  detail  with  graphic  pict 
ures,  in  order  that  the  comings  and  goings  of  the  ball  may  be 
better  followed.  Conquerors  and  conquered  are  alike  inter 
viewed.  From  a  celebrated  periodical  the  other  day  I  cut  out 
an  article  signed  "  A  Football  Scientist,"  wherein  the  author 
sought  to  show  that  the  right  tactics  to  follow  in  this  game  were 
the  same  as  those  used  by  Napoleon.  What  can  be  added  to 
this  eulogium,  when  we  know  the  peculiar  position  occupied  by 
Napoleon  in  the  imagination  of  the  Yankees? 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  such  intense  enthusiasm  for  so 
brutal  a  sport  does  not  often  arouse  strong  opposition.  The 
same  spirit  of  initiative  which  urges  entire  crowds  of  Ameri 
cans  to  bow  down  in  front  of  these  semi-gladiators  and  to 
idolize  this  violent  display  of  physical  energy  drives  other 
Americans  to  raise  a  campaign  against  this  uncontrolled  and 
uncontrollable  violence.  Leagues  have  been  formed  in  favor 
of  and  against  the  game.  It  is  very  possible  that  too  numer 
ous  accidents  will  cause  certain  States  to  pass  legislative  re 
strictions  against  the  terrible  game.  When  one  has  closely 
followed  a  really  ardent  game,  "with  plenty  of  life  and  gin 
ger,"  as  the  reporter  of  a  newspaper  said,  one  can  notice  that 
at  a  certain  point  of  excitement  the  players  are  no  longer 
masters  of  themselves.  As  I  write  these  lines  I  see  once  more 
the  figure  of  one  of  the  champions  of  Pennsylvania  after  a  dis 
puted  point  and  the  gesture  of  rage  with  which  he  threw  the 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  333 

ball  which  he  had  to  give  up.  Between  that  display  of  anger 
and  a  bad  action  there  was  too  little  distance,  too  little  psycho 
logical  breadth  —  to  employ  a  pedantic  and  very  exact  scien 
tific  formula. 

However,  such  restrictions  will  no  more  cure  the  American 
public  of  the  passion  for  football  than  they  have  cured  them 
of  the  passion  for  boxing.  When,  last  winter,  Corbett  and 
Mitchell  were  to  meet  at  Jacksonville,  it  was  necessary  to  run 
special  trains  to  carry  the  partisans  of  one  and  the  other  boxer 
to  that  fortunate  city  of  Florida.  There  was  not  a  newspaper 
in  which  the  physical  condition  of  the  two  rivals  was  not  men 
tioned  morning  after  morning,  hour  after  hour.  The  names 
of  the  relatives  and  friends  who  assisted  them,  the  furniture 
of  the  hotel  rooms  in  which  they  resided,  the  menu  of  their 
meals,  their  reading  and  their  thoughts  —  what  details  did 
one  not  find  in  the  columns  of  the  newspapers!  When  I 
went  to  Jacksonville  a  few  weeks  later,  the  fight  was  still  the 
subject  of  every  conversation  in  the  trains  which  ran  through 
the  pretty  little  town,  and  people  only  stopped  speaking  of  it 
in  order  to  discuss  the  next  fight,  which  was  proposed  between 
the  California!!  champion  and  Jackson,  of  Australia.  Even 
the  election  of  the  future  President  will  not  excite  more  popu 
lar  feeling. 

To  obtain  an  idea  of  what  such  encounters  must  be,  these 
"prize  fights,"  as  they  are  called,  wherein  the  fight  only  ends 
when  it  becomes  impossible  for  one  of  the  boxers  to  continue 
it,  one  must  witness  some  contest  regulated  by  an  athletic 
club,  that  is  to  say,  in  which  the  rounds  are  counted  and  the 
blows  are  limited.  The  most  interesting  among  those,  the 
details  of  which  I  followed,  took  place  in  Washington.  It 
was  also  the  first  at  which  I  was  present. 

On  the  third  floor  of  the  club,  in  the  gymnasium,  a  platform 
was  built  at  the  height  of  a  man's  head,  closed  in  with  ropes. 
All  around  a  thousand  spectators  were  waiting,  some  seated 


334  OUTRE-MER 

on  chairs,  others  standing  in  the  gallery.  Along  the  walls  were 
hung  gymnastic  implements,  giving  the  scene  a  most  appro 
priate  framing.  The  electricity  —  it  was  nine  o'clock  in  the 
evening  —  lighted  and  chiselled  the  outlines  of  the  impatient 
faces  of  the  votaries,  and  on  the  square  platform  a  man  was 
nervously  pacing  up  and  down,  the  "referee,"  the  arbiter  of 
the  fight.  He  wore  one  of  those  jackets  that  are  made  here 
which  exaggerate  the  fashion  and  have  a  cut  so  ample,  so 
round,  that  it  makes  them  resemble  the  shell  of  some  vast 
coleoptera.  At  last  a  murmur  of  satisfaction  rises.  The  first 
two  boxers  arrive  with  their  trainers.  They  are  covered  with 
big  bath-cloaks,  which  they  cast  aside  as  soon  as  they  get  upon 
the  platform,  and  their  bodies  appear  quite  naked,  thin,  and 
with  knobs  of  muscles.  They  seat  themselves  upon  chairs  and 
give  themselves  over  with  a  singular  passiveness  to  the  care  of 
their  trainers,  who  wash  them,  comb  them,  rub  them  like  ani 
mals,  while  the  personage  clothed  in  the  ample  jacket  an 
nounces  the  order  of  the  fight,  its  duration,  the  number  of 
rounds,  the  weight  of  the  champions,  their  names  and  their 
country. 

One  is  from  Philadelphia  and  the  other  from  Wilmington. 
The  first  shows  a  black  face,  almost  that  of  a  mulatto,  in  the 
centre  of  which  is  flattened  out  a  broken  and  crooked  nose. 
The  other  is  fair,  with  a  square  face,  the  nose  also  broken  in 
two  places,  making  a  mark  on  his  face  somewhat  resembling 
a  death's  head.  He  has  extended  his  two  arms,  which  he 
rests  on  the  two  cords  crossed  behind  him  at  an  acute  angle. 
His  muscles  of  marble  gleam  under  the  massage,  which  does 
not  even  seem  to  move  them.  At  last  the  toilette  is  finished. 
Both  men  draw  on  their  gloves.  A  gong  sounds.  They  rise, 
walk  toward  one  another,  shake  hands,  and  the  contest  com 
mences.  A  sort  of  gurgle  of  pleasure  escapes  from  the  audi 
ence,  an  interrupted  gurgle  which  will  change  by  and  by  from 
a  sigh  to  a  howl,  as  the  fight  becomes  brisk  or  quiet.  The 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  335 

Philadelphia!!  attacks  with  more  vigor  than  his  opponent,  but 
he  is  too  nervous.  His  legs  do  not  keep  their  balance.  He 
dances  and  hops,  his  arm  moving  in  a  mechanical  and  irreso 
lute  manner,  like  a  pair  of  hesitating  pincers,  advancing, 
retiring,  then  advancing  again,  indefinitely.  His  adversary 
has  a  better  guard.  He  advances,  he  retires  without  moving 
his  body,  and  his  cruel  face,  in  which  his  eyes  gleam,  as  it 
were,  from  two  blue  hollows,  is  really  like  that  of  death.  The 
blows  fall  more  heavily  as  the  fight  progresses.  The  bodies 
bend  to  avoid  them.  The  two  men  are  furious.  One  hears 
their  breathing  and  the  dull  thud  of  the  fists  as  they  fall  on 
the  naked  flesh.  After  several  blows  of  harder  delivery,  the 
"claret"  is  drawn,  as  they  say,  the  blood  flows  from  the  eyes, 
the  nose,  the  ears,  it  smears  the  cheeks  and  the  mouth,  it 
stains  the  fists  with  its  warm  and  red  flow,  while  the  public 
expresses  its  delight  by  howls,  which  the  striking  of  the  gong 
alone  stops. 

It  is  the  pause  between  two  rounds.  The  boxers,  again 
seated,  give  themselves  up,  as  before,  to  the  care  of  their 
trainers,  who  rub  them  like  ostlers  grooming  a  horse.  The 
seconds  spring  upon  the  platform,  taking  off  their  coats,  and, 
once  in  their  shirt  sleeves,  begin  to  fan  the  unfortunate  pugil 
ists,  who  are  half  faint  from  loss  of  blood,  from  blows  re 
ceived  and  given,  and  from  the  intense  nervous  effort  of  the 
fight.  Another  sound  of  the  gong  and  the  next  round  begins. 

There  were  four  such  fights  that  evening,  one  of  six  rounds, 
the  second  of  eight,  the  third  of  five,  the  last  of  eleven,  and 
during  the  two  hours  and  a  half  that  this  terrible  scene  con 
tinued  not  a  spectator  left  his  place.  Not  for  a  second  did 
the  passionate  interest,  which  fixed  every  face  on  the  ring, 
seem  to  be  suspended.  Scarce  was  a  protest  raised,  when,  on 
the  referee  calling  for  the  champions  of  the  third  contest,  two 
lads  of  sixteen  appeared,  the  one  broad-shouldered  and  lithe, 
the  other  so  meagre  and  slight  of  body,  poorly  developed  and 


336  OUTRE-MER 

fragile.  A  voice  cried,  "They  are  girls,  not  boys!  "  but  that 
did  not  prevent  frenzied  applause  when  the  thin,  undeveloped 
boy  was  struck  down  at  full  length,  the  blood  dripping  from 
his  boyish  face. 

Merely  time  enough  to  carry  him  away,  and  another  duel 
began,  this  time  between  two  old  boxers,  who  seemed  the 
incarnation  of  two  physical  types;  the  one  short  and  heavy, 
almost  fat,  with  red  hair,  the  blood  on  the  surface  of  his  too 
white  skin;  the  other  lank  and  very  tall,  all  gall  and  nerve. 
The  sinister  face  of  the  latter,  green  under  the  blue  of  a 
shaved  beard,  with  the  sly  eyes  of  a  tricky  servant,  relaxed  in 
a  ferocious  smile.  I  saw  him  towering  above  the  other,  tower 
ing  above  us  all,  while  the  agile  and  vehement  precision  of 
his  movements  gave  the  idea  of  an  invincible  energy.  After 
eleven  rounds,  this  olive-colored  athlete  was  as  dry  as  when 
he  put  foot  on  the  platform,  while  sweat,  mingled  with  blood, 
flowed  from  his  adversary.  It  was  a  series  of  surprising 
attacks  and  returns  no  less  surprising,  and  when  the  two 
champions  had  completed  the  eleventh  round  without  either 
having  been  "knocked  out,"  there  ran  through  the  assembly 
an  irresistible  stir  of  sympathy  for  the  feebler  fighter,  for  the 
short  one  who  had  defended  himself  with  so  much  pluck.  To 
the  giant  was  awarded  the  victory  with  loud  acclamations;  and 
in  the  handshakings  given  to  the  other,  there  was  admiration 
and  friendship.  The  vanquished  but  courageous  fighter  might 
have  asked  anything  of  those  men  and  they  would  have  given 
it  to  him,  so  greatly  did  they  respect  him  for  having  so  well 
held  an  impossible  position. 

This  term  of  "respect,"  applied  to  professional  boxers,  will 
seem  very  strange,  and  yet  it  is  the  only  one  which  describes 
the  prestige  with  which  those  heroes  of  pugilism  are  sur 
rounded  in  the  United  States.  One  of  my  lady  friends  here, 
to  whom  I  spoke  of  this  enthusiasm,  told  me  that  she  owed 
her  life  to  one  of  the  most  famous  boxers  of  the  West,  and 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  337 

under  circumstances  so  singular  that  it  is  worth  while  to  report 
them  in  detail.  She  had  dined  and  spent  the  evening  iri  one 
of  the  suburbs  of  the  large  town,  which  was  then  her  home, 
and  was  returning  in  her  carriage  when  she  had  to  cross  a 
street  which  was  full  of  dangerous  characters.  She  had  fallen 
into  the  turmoil  of  a  monster  demonstration  after  a  prolonged 
and  unfortunate  strike.  Her  horses  were  compelled  to  stop. 
She  put  her  head  through  the  window  out  of  curiosity,  and  an 
overwhelming  clamor  at  once  saluted  her  appearance.  The 
gleam  of  electricity  which  lighted  the  streets  had  just  struck 
on  some  large  diamonds  which  sparkled  in  her  hair.  This 
sign  of  luxury,  added  to  the  aspect  of  the  brougham,  the  livery 
of  the  coachman  and  the  footman,  and  the  turnout  of  the 
whole  establishment,  raised  the  indignation  of  this  famished 
crowd.  Fists  were  extended,  faces  approached  with  insulting 
words.  "I  had  taken  a  long  gold  pin,"  said  the  young 
woman,  "and  I  was  resolved  to  strike  at  the  eye  of  the  first 
one  who  came  too  near." 

At  that  moment,  when  she  believed  herself  to  be  in  extreme 
danger,  having  only  so  feeble  a  weapon,  she  saw  with  terror  a 
colossal  form  break  through  the  ranks  of  the  crowd,  pushing 
people  aside  with  so  much  authority  that  she  took  him  for 
one  of  their  chiefs.  "Don't  be  frightened  at  those  foolish 
people,"  said  the  man  when  he  was  near  her,  "I  will  see  to 
it.  Tell  your  coachman  to  drive  on."  The  young  woman 
once  again  leaned  out  of  the  window,  but  this  time  the  ter 
rible  .  hout  was  not  raised,  and  she  gave  her  orders  to  her  ser 
vants,  who  sat  motionless  on  the  box,  overcome  with  fright. 
The  brougham  started,  escorted  by  the  unknown,  who  simply 
rested  his  hand  on  the  ledge  of  the  window,  the  crowd  separat 
ing  to  let  the  equipage  pass.  Once  beyond  the  strikers,  the 
unknown  saluted  the  lady.  The  coachman  whipped  up  his 
horses  and  started  off  at  full  speed.  The  footman  was  still 
trembling  all  over  as  they  reached  the  door  of  the  house. 


338  OUTRE-MER 

"You  may  imagine  that  I  was  anxious  to  know  by  whom  I 
had  been  saved,"  she  continued,  "but  the  two  servants  were 
Irishmen,  who  had  just  arrived  from  Europe,  and  knew 
nobody.  The  description  which  I  gave  to  some  of  my  friends 
who  were  acquainted  with  the  personal  appearance  of  the 
leaders  of  the  strike  did  not  answer  to  any  of  them.  I  had, 
therefore,  given  up  the  hope  of  knowing  the  name  of  my  mys 
terious  protector  whom  in  fancy  I  saw  continually,  with  his  thin 
face,  haughty  and  martial,  his  domineering  look  and  the  ease, 
at  once  strong  and  supple,  of  his  movements. 

"But  fancy,  seven  or  eight  weeks  later,  as  my  mother  and  I 
were  in  a  shop  buying  furs,  a  disturbance  broke  out  at  the  door. 
I  saw  my  coachman  off  his  seat  and  one  of  my  horses  on  the 
ground,  and  a  man,  totally  drunk,  fighting  with  the  police. 
I  recognized  my  rescuer,  and  at  the  same  time  learned  his 
name  and  the  wild  exploit  which  he  had  just  accomplished. 

It  was  John  M.  V ,  the  celebrated  boxer,  who,  under  the 

influence  of  alcohol,  had  bet  that  he  would  fell  a  horse  with  his 
fist.  Chance  had  it  that  this  absurd  wager  brought  him  in  front 
of  this  store,  and  that  he  just  happened  to  strike  one  of  my 
horses.  I  was  able  to  acquit  myself,  at  all  events  to  a  certain 
extent,  of  my  debt  toward  him  by  preventing  them  from  pros 
ecuting  him  for  his  act,  although  there  was  little  risk  of  his 
being  rigorously  dealt  with.  He  was  too  popular." 

Beside  the  pleasures  of  sport  we  must  place  those  of  the 
theatre.  The  two  are  not  so  far  apart  as  might  at  first  sight 
appear.  A  passion  for  the  play  which  results  in  respect  for  the 
actors  is  general  among  the  Americans,  and  we  know  what  recep 
tion  Mme.  Sarah  Bernhardt,  Mme.  Eleonora  Duse,  M.  Coquelin, 
and  Mr.  Irving  have  had  among  them  —  to  mention  only  the 
names  of  four  famous  artists,  and  not  to  speak  of  singers.  Not 
only  the  playing  of  these  great  actors  interested  the  public,  but 
also  their  personality,  and,  above  all,  their  ideas  about  art. 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  339 

In  every  town  in  the  United  States  there  is  a  group  of 
amateurs  whose  study  and  delight  it  is  to  discuss  the  more 
or  less  intelligent  rendering  of  such  and  such  a  play  or  musical 
work.  I  have  said  study,  for  even  here  the  evidence  of  purpose 
is  visible.  At  Boston,  for  instance,  you  will  find  that  the  pro 
grammes  of  each  of  the  celebrated  concerts  is  accompanied  by 
a  technical  commentary,  so  accurate,  so  lucid,  and  at  the  same 
time  so  erudite,  that  the  pamphlet  is  in  truth  a  chapter  in  the 
study  of  musical  history.  At  Chicago,  when  Coquelin  was  giv 
ing  the  representation  of  Tartufe,  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
the  newspapers  of  the  following  day  contained  dissertations  on 
Moliere's  comedy  which  were  as  scholarly,  as  analytic  and  as 
critical  as  could  have  been  the  feuilleton  of  the  Temps  or  the 
Journal  des  Debats.  And  yet,  besides  these  evidences  of  a 
fastidious  taste  and  a  superior  dilettantism,  you  find  this  same 
public  accepting  the  most  astonishing  oddities. 

I  remember  a  gala  night  at  the  opera  in  New  York,  when 
the  music  was  sung  by  one  of  the  actors  in  German  and  by 
another  in  French,  while  the  chorus  replied  in  Italian,  and  no 
English  was  heard.  But  is  there  not  a  secret  harmony  between 
such  apparently  contradictory  manifestations?  If  you  go  to 
the  theatre  for  pleasure,  if  you  are  a  voluptuary  of  music  and 
an  epicure  of  harmony,  such  things  shock  and  annoy  you.  All 
your  enthusiasm  cools  in  that  displeasure,  and  you  have  the 
uncontrollable  desire  to  take  up  your  hat  and  walk  out.  But 
if  you  are  conscious  that  you  are  studying  the  genius  of  a 
master  or  the  talent  of  an  artist,  you  accept  the  performance, 
though  mutilated.  You  accept  it,  above  all,  if  you  are  devoured 
with  that  need  of  European  assimilation  which  takes  possession 
of  intellectual  America  not  less  than  fashionable  America.  Not 
being  able  to  have  the  whole  opera  and  all  the  Come"die  Fran- 
caise  from  the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  these  people  take  what 
they  can  —  the  very  best,  it  must  be  acknowledged  —  and  they 
enjoy  it,  as  the  English  can  enjoy  the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon, 


340  OUTRE-MER 

which  is  in  broken  fragments  and  without  cohesion.  But  their 
double  passion  is  satisfied,  —  that,  in  the  first  place,  of  cultivating 
themselves,  and,  second,  of  having  all  the  best  actors  of  London 
and  Paris  in  New  York. 

We  must  look  for  the  original  American  genius  and  the  true 
dramatic  pleasure  of  the  people  in  performances  of  quite  a 
different  kind.  The  play  which  the  authors  of  this  country 
excel  in  writing  and  the  actors  in  playing  is  a  kind  of  comedy, 
almost  without  affectation  and  intrigue,  entirely  composed  of 
local  scenes  and  customs,  and  mixed  with  pantomime.  If  the 
now  antiquated  expression,  "  a  section  of  life,'*  could  ever  have 
been  applied  to  plays,  it  may  be  to  these.  They  show  all  the 
peculiarities  of  the  different  States,  —  sometimes  the  singular 
customs  of  the  South,  as  in  the  New  South,  which  I  have 
already  analyzed ;  at  other  times  those  of  the  West,  as  in  In 
Mizzoura,  or  those  of  the  North,  as  in  a  play  called  A  Tem 
perance  Town,  which  I  saw  in  New  York.  In  the  sub-title  of 
this  last  play  —  the  most  typical,  perhaps,  of  all  —  we  are  told 
that  it  "  is  intended  as  a  more  or  less  truthful  presentation  of 
certain  incidents  of  life  relating  to  the  sale  and  use  of  liquor 
in  a  small  village  in  a  prohibition  State."  The  great  curiosity 
aroused  by  this  comedy  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  sympathetic 
personage  is  a  drunkard. 

"  Is  it  worth  while  to  destroy  the  abuse  of  drink  in  order  to 
install  the  triumph  of  hypocrisy?"  asks  one  of  the  heroes  in 
the  last  act.  Therein  lies  all  the  moral  of  this  singular  work, 
in  which,  besides  pathetic  scenes,  almost  melodramatic  buffoon 
eries  of  this  kind  are  to  be  found.  It  is  Christmas  night.  The 
daughter  of  the  minister,  expelled  by  her  father,  is  dragging 
herself  along  the  walls  of  the  church  in  which  her  father  is 
preaching.  Meanwhile  a  facetious  drunkard  places,  on  the 
steps  of  the  church,  a  large  plank  covered  with  snow,  over 
which,  one  after  the  other,  all  the  members  of  the  congrega 
tion  fall  as  they  come  out.  It  is  in  such  extraordinary  contrasts 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  341 

as  these  that  the  public  seems  to  take  wild  delight.  Laughter 
is  not,  as  with  us,  excited  by  the  witty  and  somewhat  free  joke 
with  double  meaning.  It  is  cold-blooded  and  totally  unex 
pected  drollery  which  excites  it.  All  of  a  sudden  and  in  a 
tragic  moment,  one  of  the  artists  accomplishes  a  clown  trick. 
He  raises  the  hat  from  the  head  of  his  interlocutor  with  a  kick, 
as  he  performs  a  dangerous  jump  over  a  table.  Then  the  scene 
continues,  these  extravagances  having  done  nothing  more  than 
raise  the  wild  laughter  of  the  audience.  To  the  eyes  of  the 
stranger,  unaccustomed  to  this  mosaic  out  of  real  life,  scenes 
of  local  customs  and  of  extravagant  gambols,  this  epileptic 
gayety  savors  of  the  bar,  of  the  intoxication  of  alcohol,  and  of 
incipient  madness. 

The  oddest  thing  is  that  these  players,  who  are  in  a  measure 
gymnasts  and  clowns,  are  extraordinary  in  the  accurate  sim 
plicity  and  realism  of  the  serious  portions  of  their  parts.  In 
one  of  these  comedies,  which  was  called,  I  think,  The  Coun 
try  Circus,  I  witnessed  a  scene  of  theft  acted  with  incompar 
able  perfection  by  three  chance  performers.  One  represented 
the  manager  of  the  circus  at  his  ticket  office,  the  second  was  a 
negro  asking  for  a  ticket  at  that  office,  the  third  was  a  police 
man  guarding  the  entrance  to  the  theatre.  The  negro  gave  a 
ten-dollar  bill  to  the  manager,  who  returned  him  only  five  dol 
lars'  change.  The  negro  complained.  The  manager  bent  over 
toward  the  opening,  cried,  "  Officer  !  "  and  accused  his  victim 
of  theft,  upon  which  the  policeman  collared  the  poor  black, 
and  pushed  him  by  force  into  the  circus.  Then,  having 
returned  to  the  ticket  office,  he  received  two  dollars  from  the 
manager.  The  startled  passivity  of  the  negro,  the  cutting 
banter  of  the  Barnum,  who  was  "  letting  him  in,"  the  brutal 
and  sordid  duplicity  of  the  policeman  —  the  features  were 
marked  as  in  an  etching,  the  pantomime  was  rendered  almost 
intolerable  by  its  truthfulness. 

The  negro  and  the  policeman  are,  moreover,  two  of  the  fa- 


342  OUTRE-MER 

vorite  personages  of  the  really  popular  farces ;  another  is  the 
chivalrous  blackguard,  whom  I  have  already  outlined.  But  the 
unrivalled  character  is  the  "tramp,"  the  professional  vagabond, 
in  the  toils  of  his  two  enemies,  the  policeman  and  the  brake- 
man.  The  struggle  around  a  freight  car,  wherein  the  tramp 
wishes  to  have  a  seat,  or  whence  the  brakeman  expels  him,  is 
the  unfailing  theme  which  lends  itself  to  all  sorts  of  tricks  and 
jokes.  The  tramp  is,  in  fact,  the  great  popular  humorist.  It 
is  he  who  gives  their  nicknames  to  the  railroad  companies,  who, 
for  instance,  baptizes  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio,  the  "  B.  and  O., " 
"  Beefsteak  and  Onions."  In  one  of  the  theatres  in  Washing 
ton  I  have  known  an  audience  rise  in  wild  laughter  at  that  joke. 
The  large  box  in  front  of  the  stage,  one  of  the  only  four  in  the 
hall,  was  occupied  that  night  by  a  spectator  who  had  placed  his 
feet  on  the  velvet  of  the  balustrade,  and  of  whom  one  saw 
nothing  but  the  patent  leather  of  his  boots  shining  beneath  the 
electric  light,  and  his  swinging  hand,  a  big,  hairy  hand,  loaded 
with  rings.  He  manifested  his  delight  by  knocking  his  heels 
against  the  red  velvet,  which  served  him  as  a  support  in  his 
comfortable  position.  Probably  this  man,  who  must  have  paid 
fifteen  dollars  for  his  box,  was  one  of  those  newly  enriched 
Westerners,  who  have  tried  twenty  vocations,  have  made  a  fort 
une  several  times,  and  have  kept  company  during  their  advent 
urous  existence  with  people  of  all  classes  and  of  all  descriptions. 
Such  individuals,  and  they  constitute  the  foundation  of  the 
American  public,  have  too  complete  an  experience  of  human 
life  not  to  expect  exact  observation  in  a  comedy,  and  real 
pictures  of  manners.  On  the  other  hand,  though  often  without 
scruple,  they  have  retained,  through  their  Odyssey  of  business, 
a  certain  youthful,  almost  infantine,  naivete,  which  is  traceable 
everywhere  here.  They  are,  besides,  honest  enough,  and  even 
scrupulous  in  questions  of  love. 

These  local  studies,  interlarded  with  buffooneries,  from  which 
all  obscenity  is  eliminated,  correspond  to  these  various  features. 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  343 

And  notice  that  the  managers  understand  it  well.  Read  this 
puff  which  I  copy  from  a  programme  : '  "  The  actors  of  this 
troupe  propose  to  act  only  native  plays  by  native  authors  and 
this  one  [follows  the  title]  is  essentially  American  in  its  scenery, 
in  its  action,  and  in  its  aim.  The  characters  are  essentially 
American,  and  the  play  breathes  everywhere  an  American  fresh 
ness  which  is  in  keeping  with  the  greatness  of  America.  There 
is  not  in  the  piece  a  single  bad  character,  man  or  woman.  Not 
a  syllable  is  uttered  which  could  bring  a  blush  to  the  most 
modest  cheek.  This  piece  attacks  the  vices  of  dissipated 
society  and  the  miseries  which  are  the  outgrowth  of  the  con 
centration  of  civilization  in  the  great  towns.  No  soiled  dove 
beats  its  soiled  wings  here ;  there  are  no  brigands  in  dress 
clothes  flying  round  in  search  of  prey.  ..."  All  was  true  in 
this  announcement,  which  was  only  incomplete  on  this  point,— 
that  the  piece  ended  without  any  reason  having  been  given  for 
the  exhibition  of  a  family  of  acrobats. 

I  have  turned  over  the  leaves  of  a  great  number  of  illustrated 
comic  newspapers,  those  which  friends  in  New  York  have 
pointed  out  to  me  as  the  best.  The  Americans  dote  on  these 
publications,  which  are  to  be  found  in  all  the  halls  of  the  hotels, 
in  all  the  railway  carriages,  and  on  the  club  tables.  Without 
exaggerating  the  importance  of  these  pamphlets,  we  must 
recognize  in  them,  in  every  country,  a  certain  documentary 
value.  They  characterize  the  humor  of  the  race  and  its  delight 
in  mockery.  Besides,  you  will  find  in  them  a  thousand  details 
of  habits,  described  off-hand,  their  exaggeration  rendering  them 
still  more  perceptible  to  the  traveller.  On  running  through  a 
collection  of  several  numbers  of  some  of  these  papers,  a  first 
observation  is  forced  upon  one ;  namely,  the  entire  absence 
of  those  nude  drawings  which  form  the  perverse  prettiness  of 
similar  periodicals  in  Paris,  and  the  no  less  remarkable  absence 
of  allusions  to  marital  misadventures.  One  might  believe,  in 
noting  this  absence,  that  neither  gallantry  nor  adultery  existed 


344  OUTRE-MER 

in  the  United  States,  or  that,  if  they  exist,  it  is  in  such  a  shadow 
of  secrecy  that  they  escape  even  satire.  Do  not  suppose,  how 
ever,  that  the  caricaturists  profess  to  be  particularly  prejudiced 
in  favor  of  marriage.  But  when  they  see  its  defects,  it  is  espe 
cially  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  budget,  as  is  fitting  in  the 
country  of  the  "almighty  dollar." 

Family  life  is  too  costly  and  the  men  must  work  too  hard. 
This  is  their  principal  grievance.  Here,  for  example,  is  a 
wedding  reception.  The  drawing-room  is  full  of  people  who 
are  complimenting  the  newly  married  couple  and  the  parents. 
"  I  congratulate  you  on  the  marriage  of  your  daughter,"  says 
one  of  the  visitors.  "  I  see  you  are  gradually  getting  all  the 
girls  off  your  hands."  And  the  father  answers,  "The  misfort 
une  is  that  it  costs  so  much  to  keep  their  husbands."  "Your 
men  work  too  hard  in  America,"  said  a  foreign  count  to  a  girl. 
"  Yes,"  she  replied,  "  they  have  to  maintain  their  titled  sons-in- 
law."  When  it  is  not  the  father  who  works  himself  to  death,  it 
is  the  husband.  Here  on  a  Christmas  night  appears  a  certain 
Popleigh,  aged  before  his  time,  thin  and  bent,  his  arms  full 
of  presents,  which  tell  of  his  numerous  family.  A  gentleman 
wrapped  up  in  a  comfortable  fur  coat,  a  cigar  in  his  mouth, 
gazes  at  him  sarcastically.  "  It  is  Mr.  Singleton,"  says  the 
legend,  simply,  "  who  was  a  rejected  suitor  for  the  hand  of  the 
present  Mrs.  Popleigh."  Even  aside  from  the  question  of 
money,  this  nation  does  not  seem  to  believe  that  an  American 
marriage  is  a  very  fortunate  operation.  Listen  to  this  dialogue 
between  a  husband  and  his  wife.  She :  "  After  all,  what 
have  you  at  the  club,  you  men,  that  makes  it  so  attractive  to 
you,  and  which  you  have  not  at  home?"  He:  "My  dear, 
we  have  not  at  the  club  what  we  have  at  home.  That  is  the 
attraction."  It  is  the  bankruptcy  of  the  happiness  of  the  man. 
As  for  the  happiness  of  the  woman,  she  herself  does  not  expect 
it.  "Yes,"  replies  an  engaged  girl,  with  her  eyes  dreamily 
fixed  on  the  skies,  "  I  am  very  happy.  At  least,  I  suppose  so. 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  345 

There  is  but  one  great  bother.  Once  married,  I  shall  no  more 
be  able  to  flirt." 

This  mocking  remark  is  but  a  commentary  on  a  very  real 
fact,  which  I  have  attempted  to  explain;  namely,  the  social 
sovereignty  of  the  young  girl  in  the  United  States,  and  if  a 
thousand  little  signs  had  not  pointed  out  that  sovereignty  to 
the  traveller,  he  would  find  the  proof  of  it  in  the  caricatures. 
The  young  girl  appears  as  often  in  these  papers  as  Lorette  in 
the  albums  of  Gavarni,  as  the  fast  woman  in  those  of  Gre"vin 
and  as  the  marcheuse  of  the  opera  or  the  sidewalk  in  those  of 
Forain.  As  those  three  great  masters  have  felt  the  graceful 
ness  of  the  Parisian  woman  at  three  different  epochs,  so  the 
American  artist  feels  with  an  incomparable  delicacy  the  beauty 
of  the  young  girl  of  his  country.  There  she  is,  smiling, 
dreaming,  talking,  on  horseback,  alive,  in  fact,  with  her  fine 
figure,  her  well-developed  shoulders,  her  daring  elegance,  her 
white  teeth,  her  eyes  wide  open  on  the  world  —  too  wide  open, 
for  they  see  too  clearly.  Listen  to  the  conversation  which 
the  artist  attributes  to  these  admirable  persons,  and  you  will 
be  edified  by  their  intelligence.  Here  is  one  of  them  who 
has  seated  herself  on  a  deck  chair  near  a  young  man  as  beauti 
ful  as  herself.  With  deep  emotion,  she  clasps  her  hands  and 
says,  replying  to  a  question  which  one  can  guess:  "Yes, 
but  you  are  very  poor,  Tom,  and  I  have  no  money.  With  me 
my  face  is  my  fortune." 

Another  is  taking  a  country  walk  with  an  adorer  who  is  say 
ing  with  bitterness,  "  If  I  were  rich  you  would  marry  me  at 
once."  "Ah,  George!  George!"  she  replies.  "The  devo 
tion  which  you  show  me  breaks  my  heart."  "What  do  you 
mean?"  "That  you  have  often  praised  my  beauty,  but  until 
now  I  did  not  know  how  much  you  recognized  my  good  sense." 
These  realistic  girls,  just  as  the  most  realistic  men,  know 
that  marriage  is  an  association  where  their  partner  will  ask 
them  to  bring  money  — •  a  great  deal  of  money.  Two  of  them 


346  OUTRE-MER 

are  chatting,  doubtless  on  the  Newport  landing-stage,  for  one 
of  them  wears  a  yachting-cap,  the  other  a  sailor  hat  with  a 
colored  ribbon.  Vessels  are  passing  out  at  sea.  "I  heard 
that  your  father  had  sold  his  yacht?"  queries  one.  "Yes," 
replied  her  friend;  "in  these  hard  times  it  is  a  rather  heavy 
expense."  "Then,"  replies  the  indiscreet  friend,  "the  news 
that  you  are  going  to  be  married  is  doubtless  not  true." 
Further,  the  handsome  young  men,  companions  and  accom 
plices  in  the  flirting  of  these  pretty  children,  do  not  conceal 
from  them  their  interested  motives. 

"Would  you  have  loved  me  had  I  been  poor?"  asks  one 
of  them  of  a  fine  young  fellow  of  twenty-two  or  twenty-three 
years  of  age,  who  replies,  clasping  her  to  his  heart:  — 

"Ah,  darling!  I  should  not  have  known  you." 

And  you  do  not  feel  over-indignant  at  seeing  money  con 
stantly  mixed  up  in  affairs  of  the  heart.  The  heart  is  so  little 
in  question.  The  caricaturist  takes  care  to  let  you  know  it. 
Engagements  which  are  tied  and  untied  so  easily  do  not  enlist 
the  hearts  of  the  elegant  dolls  which  the  society  man  and 
girl  are. 

"Ah,  dear,"  murmurs  a  Perdita,  raising  her  beautiful,  half- 
veiled  eyes,  with  their  long  lashes,  to  the  lips  of  an  elegant 
cavalier,  "tell  me  truly  how  much  you  love  me." 

"You  are  my  favorite  betrothed,"  he  replies,  seriously,  "the 
only  one  that  I  love." 

And  there  are  a  great  many  chances  that  she  will  see  a  deli 
cate  flattery  in  this  singular  declaration,  for  she  herself  does 
not  attach  a  very  deep  significance  to  the  word  "betrothal," 
at  least  if  we  are  to  believe  this  other  dialogue  between  two 
young  girls  who  are  exchanging  confidences. 

"They  told  me  that  you  were  in  love  with  him,"  says  one. 

"  No,  no,"  replies  the  other,  quickly;  "  it  was  not  so  serious 
as  that.  We  were  only  engaged  !  " 

She  has  doubtless  heard  —  or  he  has  heard  —  that  the  stocks 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  347 

held  by  his  father  —  or  by  her  father  —  have  gone  down  con 
siderably  and  everything  has  been  broken  off.  Had  they 
acted  otherwise,  society  would  have  thought  them  very  silly. 

"  Do  you  know  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Brown-Smith  must  find 
things  very  amusing?  "  says  Perdita  to  her  friend,  Penelope. 

"Why?" 

"Why?  Both  of  them  wished  to  marry  for  money,  and 
neither  of  them  has  a  cent.  They  have  lots  of  fun  laughing 
at  each  other." 

"Lots  of  fun."  There  is  the  best  summing  up,  not  only 
of  the  situation,  but  of  all  these  caricatures.  Nothing  less 
resembles  the  sharp  and  grim  acerbity  of  our  own  humorists. 
In  this  chaffing  of  young  girls,  which  might  so  easily  be  cruel, 
there  is  much  jovial  good-humor.  The  same  may  be  said  in 
regard  to  the  caricatures  of  the  lower  classes  —  notably,  the 
tramps,  the  negroes,  and  the  Irish.  Indeed,  poverty  is  more 
intolerable  in  the  United  States  than  elsewhere,  in  a  climate 
so  severe  in  winter,  so  burning  in  summer,  and  amid  crushing 
competition.  Listen,  however,  to  this  vagabond,  whom  a 
piece  of  money,  given  by  a  generous  passer-by,  has  enabled 
to  enter  a  bar,  where  he  is  standing  in  front  of  a  free-lunch 
table :  — 

"Haven't  you  eaten  enough?"  cries  the  proprietor,  over 
come  by  the  sight  of  the  ham,  salted  fish,  bread  and  butter, 
and  fried  oysters  disappearing  in  the  abysses  of  that  rag- 
bedecked  stomach. 

"Do  I  look  like  a  man  who  has  eaten  enough?  "  replies  the 
vagabond,  sneeringly. 

One  of  his  feet  is  shod  with  a  slipper  and  a  gaiter,  the  other 
with  an  elastic  boot.  A  check  scarf  is  bound  round  his  chin 
and  protects  the  swollen  cheek,  the  eye  at  once  insolent,  jeer 
ing,  and  knavish  like  himself.  This  impertinent  joke  shows  the 
tone  of  the  replies  ascribed  by  the  caricaturist  to  these  tramps, 
whom  he  willingly  shows  us,  one  smoking,  another  reading  a 


348  OUTRE-MER 

newspaper  with  spectacles  on  his  nose.  Their  idleness  amuses 
him  without  making  him  indignant,  and  he  does  not  consider 
it  right  to  characterize  them  with  sinister  legends  such  as 
Gavarni  found  for  his  Virelocque. 

Nor  does  the  caricaturist  develop  the  worst  and  most  atro 
cious  features  of  the  negro,  —  the  criminal  sensuality,  ferocity, 
and  perfidy  of  the  former  slave.  No.  He  makes  merry  joy 
ously  over  his  vanity  and  his  familiarity.  He  has  drawn  one, 
for  instance,  entering  his  master's  room  wearing  a  pair  of  check 
trousers  of  the  same  material  as  the  coat  of  his  master.  And 
the  latter  says  to  him  :  — 

"  Look  here,  Tom,  I  have  told  you  already  not  to  wear  on 
week  days  those  trousers  that  I  gave  you  when  I  wear  the  rest 
of  the  suit." 

And  Tom  replies  :  "  Why,  boss,  are  you  afraid  they  will 
take  us  for  twins?  " 

We  can  imagine  the  happy  smile  which  parts  the  big  lips 
that  show  the  jester's  white  teeth.  He  is  about  to  say,  as  one 
of  his  brethren  said  to  one  of  my  friends  who  had  been  stop 
ping  in  a  country  house  where  he  was  the  servant :  — 

"  Come  soon  again  to  see  us,  you  are  such  a  palatable  gentle 
man." 

So  in  regard  to  those  terrible  Irishmen,  so  astonishing  with 
their  poetry  and  their  cruelty,  their  patriotic  flame  and  vindic 
tive  rage,  their  eloquence  and  drunkenness,  their  spirit  of 
enterprise  and  disorder,  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  caricaturists 
only  show  the  drunkenness  and  disorder.  One  time  it  is  an 
Irish  servant-girl  whom  they  depict,  saying  in  her  brogue  to 
the  inspector  of  immigration  :  — 

"  Oi'm  a  French  nurse."  At  another  time  a  maid  of  the 
same  race,  whose  mistress  asks  :  — 

"Have  you  swept  the  room?"  replies,  "Yes,  ma'm,  I've 
swept  everything  under  the  bed." 

We  can  see  that  the  space  beneath  the  bed  has  become  a 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  349 

perfect  cavern  of  refuse,  where  all  the  leavings  of  the  house 
have  been  dumped.  Sometimes  it  is  an  Irishman  coming 
home  perfectly  intoxicated,  whose  state  the  sketcher  repre 
sents  by  multiplying  the  head  of  his  wife  seven  times,  as  she 
looks  at  him  and  out  of  her  seven  mouths  says :  — 

"  If  you  saw  yourself  as  I  see  you,  you  would  be  very  much 
disgusted." 

"And  if  you  saw  yourself  as  I  see  you,"  replies  the  drunk 
ard,  "you  would  also  be  very  much  astonished." 

Sometimes  it  is  domestic  quarrels,  in  which  everything 
gives  way,  the  man  assaulting  his  wife  with  a  chair  and  she 
retorting  with  a  flat-iron.  And  policemen,  themselves  Irish 
men,  preside  at  this  carnival  of  tramps,  negroes,  and  Irishmen, 
drinking  hard  and  hitting  like  the  others,  and  shouting,  "  Take 
that!  "  as  they  progress  with  their  game  of  head-breaking. 

No  bitterness  spoils  the  joviality.  One  would  imagine  that 
for  these  observers  life  in  the  streets  and  in  the  drawing-room 
is  really  a  clownish  pantomime.  With  that  they  are  very  exact 
—  their  drawings  without  imagination  come  very  close  to 
reality.  Scarcely  do  they  change  the  phiz  of  the  tramp,  the 
mouth  of  the  Irishman,  the  big  mouth  of  the  negro,  the  self-im 
portance  and  vacuity  of  expression  of  the  "dude,"  to  employ 
their  slang  word.  One  guesses  that  they  are  good-humored 
people,  very  lucid,  very  positive,  writing  and  sketching  for 
lucid,  positive,  and  good-tempered  readers.  The  dark  mis 
anthropy  of  a  Gavarni  or  a  Forain  makes  you  suffer  as  you 
laugh.  It  entails  long  reflection  and  nerves  worn  with  thought 
and  powerless  for  action.  The  American  belongs  to  a  world 
which  is  too  active,  too  hasty,  and  on  certain  sides,  too  healthy 
for  such  poisoned  irony. 

It  is  curious  to  compare  the  sarcasm  of  political  caricatures 
with  the  innocent  and  altogether  indulgent  gayety  of  the  carica 
ture  of  manners.  These  same  sketchers,  who  show  themselves 
simple  and  light  caricaturers  of  the  ridiculous  characteristics 


350  OUTRE-MER 

and  vices  of  every-day  life,  develop,  when  it  becomes  a  matter 
of  party,  a  species  of  frenzy,  and  of  hatred  which  can  hardly 
be  surpassed.  The  nomination  of  an  ambassador  who  does 
not  suit  them,  the  adoption  of  a  bill  against  which  they  are 
carrying  on  a  campaign  or  the  rejection  of  a  bill  which  they 
are  upholding,  a  hostile  candidature,  a  stirring  speech,  —  these 
are  to  them  occasions  for  severe  blows,  the  hardness  of  which 
contrasts  in  the  most  unexpected  manner  with  the  good  temper 
of  the  sketchers  of  manners.  You  suddenly  feel  calumny 
and  its  bitterness,  anger  and  its  insults.  From  amusing  and 
easy  fantasy  you  fall  into  the  depths  of  the  harshest  polemic, 
without  wit,  and  without  fear  of  making  personal  allusions  of 
the  most  grossly  insulting  kind.  It  seems  to  me  that  both 
phenomena  are  logical  and  well  in  keeping  with  what  may  be 
seen  everywhere  among  Americans.  So  far  as  regards  the 
affairs  of  every-day  life  they  are  good  fellows  —  amiable,  open, 
easy.  But  as  soon  as  they  have  to  do  with  a  business  ques 
tion,  they  are  as  keen  and  energetic  in  the  defence  of  their 
interests  and  in  the  conquest  of  yours  as  they  were  found  easy 
and  generous  before.  The  reason  is  that  then  they  were 
amusing  themselves;  now  they  are  fighting. 

Politics  is  one  of  the  most  important  businesses  of  a  country 
where  each  triumph  places  all  public  offices  at  the  disposal  of 
the  party.  It  is  a  matter  which  interests  not  merely  a  small 
number  of  ambitious  people,  but  an  enormous  number  of  citi 
zens  enrolled  under  the  republican  and  democratic  banners. 
Their  antipathies  must  be  gratified,  their  enthusiasm  stirred, 
their  passions  served. 

In  all  countries  where  universal  suffrage  is  the  rule,  it  be 
comes  necessary  to  speak  to  the  people  by  means  of  pictures. 
They  see  everything  as  a  whole,  and  naturally  like  coarse  and 
striking  things.  The  colored  caricatures  which  are  set  forth 
on  the  first  pages  of  the  illustrated  newspapers  satisfy  their 
taste.  As  the  editor  of  a  Chicago  newspaper  said  to  me,  they 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  351 

always  like  a  fight.  The  fight  here  takes  the  form  of  pictured 
burlesque,  but  the  burlesque  is  ordinarily  so  exaggerated  and 
so  plainly  unjust  and  prejudiced  that  it  becomes  offensive. 
Wishing,  for  instance,  to  lampoon  a  perfect  gentleman,  who 
was  simply  guilty  of  having  been  nominated  to  a  high  position 
by  Mr.  Cleveland,  the  caricaturist  represented  that  distin 
guished  man  with  grossly  travestied  features,  writing  under 
neath  such  phrases  as  "Cleveland's  nominee  for ";  or 

again,  "  If  Abraham  Lincoln  were  to  meet  Mr.  So  and  So  in 
the  flesh,  his  first  impulse  would  be  to  take  him  by  the  collar 
and  throw  him  into  a  mud-hole." 

Such  means  of  combating  an  adversary  may  succeed  with 
electors  of  the  lowest  class.  They  are  far  from  clever;  for, 
according  to  Talleyrand's  profound  remark,  "Everything 
exaggerated  is  insignificant."  For  this  reason,  the  Ameri 
cans  succeed  well  in  caricaturing  social  customs,  treating 
them  lightly  and  inoffensively,  and,  for  a  like  reason,  their 
political  caricatures,  with  few  exceptions,  are  but  common 
place. 

The  American  goes  into  all  recreations  —  sport,  the  theatre, 
burlesque  —  with  the  same  spirit  which  we  have  seen  him  bring 
into  society,  into  social  problems,  into  education.  He  shows 
himself  clear-headed  and  positive,  with  a  singular  mixture  of 
good  fellowship,  tenacity,  practical  realism,  and  exuberant 
social  health  and  spirits.  Students  of  human  nature,  who  have 
reflected  upon  the  laws  of  the  equilibrium  of  human  faculties, 
will  not  be  astonished  that  in  this  country,  where  the  practical 
spirit  is  so  developed,  there  should  be  a  place  for  other  pleas 
ures,  which,  for  want  of  a  better  expression,  I  shall  call  the 
pleasures  of  mysticism.  In  no  country  more  than  in  America 
do  spiritual  mediums  find  a  better  reception,  nowhere  do  the 
occult  sciences  gain  more  adepts,  nowhere  is  there  a  larger 
number  of  persons  ready  to  be  initiated  into  their  mysteries. 
One  of  the  most  celebrated  professors  of  Cambridge,  who  has 


352  OUTRE-MER 

made  special  study  of  the  reason  why  his  countrymen  feel  this 
interest  in  the  supernatural,  said  to  me :  — 

"There  are  among  us  many  minds  who  have  no  interest  in 
science,  but  who  believe  in  direct  and  personal  communica 
tion  with  the  unknown  world.  Science  teaches  that  truth  is 
one,  and  always  the  same,  independent  of  the  individual;  these 
people,  on  the  contrary,  are  convinced  that  there  is  a  constant 
revelation  by  Providence  proportionate  to  the  needs  and 
merits  of  all.  When  I  made  their  acquaintance,  brought  up 
though  I  had  been  in  orthodoxy,  I  thought  them  mad." 

"And  now?"  I  asked  him. 

"Now,"  he  replied,  "like  Hamlet,  I  think  that  there  are 
many  more  things  in  this  world  than  are  dreamed  of  in  our 
philosophy." 

This  frame  of  mind  in  a  truly  superior  man,  who  ended  by 
telling  me  that  he  believed  in  the  possibility  of  communica 
tion  between  the  living  and  the  dead,  is  not  exceptional  in 
America.  A  traveller,  interested  in  psychology,  would  find  in 
the  large  number  of  those  whom  they  call  here  spiritualists,  and 
who  really  are  mediums,  a  most  interesting  subject  of  study. 

Here,  in  place  of  that  analysis,  which  would  furnish  the 
material  for  a  volume,  is  a  sketch  of  a  visit  to  a  woman  who 
is  one  of  the  most  celebrated  in  the  United  States  for  the  gift 
of  double  sight.  Mrs.  N—  -  lives  in  the  outskirts  of  Boston, 
in  a  condition  of  ease,  which  she  owes  to  her  singular  power. 
How  far  is  that  power  imaginary?  How  far  is  it  real?  How 
sincere  is  it?  How  much  is  charlatanism  in  this  strange 
creature  ?  These  are  questions  which  I  cannot  answer.  Since 
a  great  number  of  Americans  believe  in  her,  it  is  worth  while 
to  describe  a  visit  to  her  house,  as  a  contribution  to  my  in 
quiry  into  the  habits  of  thought  of  this  country,  so  fruitful  in 
surprises. 

My  companion  in  this  visit  was  Mr.  H ,  an  Australian, 

who  is  particularly  interested  in  questions  of  this  nature,  and 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  353 

who  himself   believes  absolutely  in  the  good  faith  of   Mrs. 

N .     We  met  on  a  cold  winter's  morning  at  one  of  the 

stations  of  Boston.  Nothing  was  more  American  and  less  in 
accordance  with  the  character  of  our  expedition  than  the  res 
taurant  which  we  entered,  to  warm  ourselves  before  setting  out, 
with  its  hot  soups,  its  large  plates  of  fried  oysters,  its  atmos 
phere  of  tobacco,  and  its  population  of  smokers  and  chewers 
making  themselves  drunk  on  cocktails  at  eight  o'clock  in  the 
morning ! 

The  aspect  of  the  car  which  we  finally  took  was  not  more 
appropriate  as  a  preparation  for  spirituality.  It  was  full  of 
people  of  all  conditions,  who  had  come  to  Boston  to  work, 
and  who  were  dressed  in  such  a  way  as  one  sees  only  here, 
which  makes  it  impossible  to  guess  the  social  rank  of  the  man. 
With  small  movable  tables  before  them,  they  were  all  playing 
cards  "for  fun,"  as  H—  -  told  me, —  "for  the  pleasure  of 
passing  the  time."  Thirty  games  of  whist  were  played,  while 
the  train  was  running  through  a  snow-clad  country,  all  white, 
and  studded  with  small  wooden  houses  with  wooden  verandas, 
the  charm  of  New  England.  This  harmless  gambling-room 
on  wheels  gives  you  the  idea  of  a  people  who  have  time  to 
spare,  a  great  deal  of  time.  The  faces  of  the  players  wear  an 
expression  at  once  of  freedom,  fatigue,  and  strength.  The 
moment  is  one,  so  rare  in  America,  when  the  foreigner  feels 
a  lull,  an  apathy,  beneath  the  apparent  fever.  There  is  always 
apathy  beneath  all  activity;  but  to  perceive  it  one  must  be  in 
sympathy  with  it.  Paris  to  a  Frenchman  coming  from  the 
country,  seems  to  be  a  town  of  intensest  movement.  To  a 
Londoner,  on  the  contrary,  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  and  the 
boulevards  give  an  impression  of  luxurious,  semi-tropical  idle 
ness.  But  one  who  goes  from  New  York  to  London,  finds  the 
old  English  city,  in  its  turn,  strangely  tame,  strangely  peaceful, 
and,  I  was  going  to  say,  strangely  backward.  These  expres 
sions,  however,  correspond  to  a  reality  less  real  than  we  imag- 
AA 


354  OUTRE-MER 

inc.  We  cease  to  be  aware  of  what  we  always  feel;  that  is, 
what  we  know  very  well,  but  had  forgotten;  once  aroused  to 
a  certain  degree  of  energy,  we  maintain  ourselves  there  with 
out  effort.  So  these  hard  workers  amuse  themselves,  between 
two  crises  of  hard  work,  as  calmly  as  a  French  rentier  in  a  small 
town,  who  spends  the  whole  afternoon,  between  a  morning 
and  evening  of  utter  idleness,  in  front  of  the  green  cloth,  at  a 
game  of  "piquet  voleur  "  ! 

Mr.  H and  I  alight  at  a  country  station.  Low  hills,  all 

covered  with  snow,  close  in  the  horizon  around  the  shed 
which  serves  as  a  station  house.  A  sleigh  awaits  us,  drawn  by 
a  shaggy  horse,  which  is  driven  by  an  old  man,  accompanied 
by  a  large  dog.  It  is  the  vehicle  which  the  "seer  "  sends  for 
her  clients.  There  is  no  sham  about  her,  nothing  which 
savors  of  humbug  or  advertisement.  Her  seances  are  a  pro 
fession  with  her,  and  she  practises  it  with  a  bourgeois  simplic 
ity,  with  the  same  absence  of  surprise,  which  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  characteristics  of  the  American.  Whatever  may 
be  the  strangeness  of  his  fate,  he  accepts  it  without  seeming 
more  surprised  at  it  than  he  is  at  yours. 

Here  we  are,  then,  gliding  in  this  sleigh,  up  one  slope  and 
down  another.  We  slip  along  over  the  snow  between  the 
scarce-awakened  little  wooden  houses,  to  the  last  one,  sepa 
rated  from  the  street  by  an  asphalt  path,  a  sort  of  black  abyss 
hollowed  out  in  the  whiteness  of  the  snow.  Footprints  indi 
cate  that  more  than  one  person  must  that  day  have  knocked 
at  the  door  of  this  modern  sorceress,  to  whom  we  in  our  turn 
are  coming.  Still  the  seance  is  expensive, —  ten  dollars. 
But  of  all  passions,  that  which  reasons  the  least  is  the  super 
natural,  when  it  has  possession  of  us;  and  we  cannot  but  be 
lieve  that  this  passion  is  in  the  blood  of  the  race,  since  we 
are  close  to  Salem,  that  little  seaside  town,  the  theatre,  just 
two  hundred  years  ago,  of  a  terrible  persecution  for  witchcraft; 
in  which  twenty  persons  were  condemned  to  death ! 


AMERICAN    PLEASURES  355 

Heaven  be  praised,  contemporary  manners  and  customs  are 

gentler,  and  Mrs.  N 's  quiet  home  runs  no  risk  of  being 

troubled  by  a  like  inquisition  to  that  of  the  terrible  Protestant 
ministers  of  1692.  A  little  girl  receives  us,  all  smiles,  and 
conducts  us  into  the  parlor,  saying  that  her  mother  has  had  a 
great  many  sittings  during  the  past  few  days,  and  that  she  is 
very  tired.  The  furniture  of  the  room  is  just  the  same  as 
that  of  hundreds  of  others  of  the  same  class  which  I  have 
seen.  On  the  wall  a  picture  of  Christ  bearing  the  Cross, 
on  the  table  a  Bible,  bear  witness  to  the  owner's  religious 
sentiments,  and  volumes  of  poetry  —  Tennyson's  Princess, 
Scott's  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  Moore's  Lalla  Rookh, 
—  testify  to  the  purity  of  her  literary  tastes.  She  appears 
presently, —  a  woman  apparently  thirty-five  years  old.  The 
outline  of  her  features  seems  almost  elastic,  doubtless  owing 
to  the  extraordinary  suppleness  of  the  muscles  of  her  face. 
Her  complexion  is  fair,  bloodless,  pale,  and  lighted  up  by 
eyes  so  strangely  bright  and  so  fixed,  that  on  looking  into  the 
contracted  pupils,  so  dark  and  brilliant,  you  feel  an  undefina- 
ble  uneasiness.  She  is,  however,  very  unaffected,  and  when 
she  speaks  it  is  with  a  soft  and  languid  voice. 

She  tells  you  that  she  is  not  equal  to  the  demands  upon 
her,  that  her  trances  tire  her  too  much,  also  that  she  has  given 
a  great  number  of  ineffectual  sittings,  so  greatly  are  her  nerves 
overtaxed.  And,  in  truth,  when  one  sees  her  entering  into 
her  "trance,"  as  she  calls  it,  it  is  easy  to  understand  what 
such  an  organism  must  expend  in  vitality  under  such  an 
experience. 

With  the  shutters  closed,  and  every  light  extinguished, 
except  a  candle  under  the  table,  she  unfastens  her  hair,  settles 
herself  at  ease  in  her  loose  garment,  and  takes  the  hands  of 
one  of  us.  Some  minutes  of  silence  and  expectancy  pass,  and 
then  she  begins  to  wail  and  twist  her  fingers,  which  escape 
from  the  grasp  and  wander  into  her  hair.  She  sighs  heavily, 


356  OUTRE-MER 

deeply,  with  sighs  that  seem  to  come  from  her  innermost 
being;  her  bowed  head  bends  forward  more  and  more,  her 
entire  body  is  contorted,  as  though  she  were  fighting  against 
an  attack.  Then  comes  a  pause.  She  sleeps.  Her  open 
palms  reach  out  to  feel  the  face,  the  shoulders,  the  arm  of 
the  person  in  front  of  her,  and  she  begins  to  speak  in  a  changed 
voice,  with  an  Irish  accent.  Her  veritable  "self "  has  disap 
peared,  giving  place  to  another.  She  has  ceased  to  be  Mrs. 

N ,  living  near  Boston,  Massachusetts,  and  has  become  a 

certain  French  doctor,  who  died  at  Lyons. 

"A  strange  man,  that  doctor,"  said  some  one  to  me,  who 
had  attended  several  seances  of  this  Yankee  pythoness.  "  You 
know  him,  he  knows  you.  He  is  useful  to  the  last  degree, 
pleasant,  always  at  your  service.  He  is  a  parasite,  who 
seems  to  wish  to  excuse  himself  for  living  at  the  expense  of 
another,  and  at  the  same  time  he  is  something  of  a  fraud." 

I  never  could  find  out  whether  the  person  who  said  this  was 
serious  or  joking.  I  imagine  that  the  American  who  interests 
himself  in  these  phenomena  of  double  sight,  does  not  him 
self  know.  What  attracts  him  in  such  experiences  is  the  sat 
isfaction  of  that  need  of  excitement  which  follows  him  through 
all  the  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  and  which  is  ever  as  intense  as 
upon  the  first  day.  Then  there  is  a  certain  nervous  want  of 
balance,  from  which  many  persons  suffer  here, —  a  reaction  of 
the  inveterate  realism  of  the  world  around  them;  above  all,  it  is 
the  undying  instinct  of  the  heart  of  man  —  more  alive  in  these 
natures,  more  genuine  and  more  intense  than  in  others  —  to 
pierce  that  veil  of  mystery  with  which  human  life  is  enfolded. 
By  a  sort  of  compensation,  wherein  a  philosopher  would  recog 
nize  the  great  law  of  the  correlation  of  forces,  the  sense  of 
mystery  becomes  more  acute  in  a  country  where  everything  is 
too  evident,  too  definite,  too  voluntary. 

One  of  the  most  striking  traits  in  the  psychology  of  men 
of  action  is  the  presence  in  them  of  a  vein  of  superstition, 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  357 

the  more  evident  as  they  are  more  resolute  and  thoughtful. 
Napoleon  was  a  startling  example  of  this.  Men  of  action 
such  as  the  Americans  are,  and  of  action  so  intense,  could 
hardly  fail  to  have  their  own  kind  of  illuminism,  and  why 
should  I  not  acknowledge  that,  in  the  course  of  seances,  such 

as  Mrs.  N gave  us  that  day  and  on  another  occasion, 

it  is  impossible  not  to  admit  certain  phenomena,  which,  in 
fact,  remain  entirely  inexplicable  from  the  purely  natural 
point  of  view. 

A  traveller's  diary  such  as  this  is  hardly  the  place  for  a  dis 
cussion  of  problems  so  complex  as  the  question  whether  it  is 
possible  for  thought  to  communicate  with  thought  without  the 

intermediary  of  a  sign.  Mrs.  N was  holding  my  hands, 

and  at  the  same  time  touching  a  small  travelling-clock,  which 
had  belonged  to  some  one  she  could  not  possibly  have  known, 
—  a  sculptor,  who  killed  himself  under  particularly  sad  cir 
cumstances  of  temporary  madness.  How  did  she  know  this, 
how  learn  even  the  profession  of  the  former  owner  of  the  clock, 
and  of  his  madness,  and  even  of  the  details  of  his  suicide? 
Was  there  a  communication  between  my  mind  and  hers,  united 
by  the  personality  of  that  mysterious  Lyonese  doctor?  Did 
my  hands,  which  she  held  in  hers,  reveal  by  shakings  percepti 
ble  to  her  hyper-acute  nerves  what  my  impression  was  after 
each  of  her  words,  and  had  she  in  her  sleep  preserved  a  power 
of  being  guided  by  these  small  signs?  Or,  rather, —  for  it  is 
always  well  to  reserve  a  place  for  scepticism, —  was  she  an 
incomparable  actress,  who  guessed  my  thoughts  solely  from 
the  tone  of  my  questions  and  answers? 

But  no.  She  was  sincere.  The  psychologists  who  have 
studied  her  in  her  trances  know  too  well  the  character  of  mag 
netic  sleep  by  mechanical  means,  which  do  not  cheat.  All 
that  I  can  conclude  from  the  really  extraordinary  details  which 
she  gave  me,  a  passing  stranger,  about  one  who  had  disap 
peared,  and  of  whom  I  had  spoken  to  no  one  with  whom 


358  OUTRE-MER 

she  was  acquainted,  is  that  the  spirit  has  methods  of  knowl 
edge  unsuspected  in  our  analysis.  I  remember  that  one  of 
the  American  Buddhists  whom  I  had  met  here  said  to  me :  — 

"  In  Europe  and  the  East  you  give  an  enormous,  immoder 
ate,  and  unique  importance  to  demonstration,  which  is  but 
organized  sense  vitality.  There  is  something  else." 

When  he  spoke  thus,  we  were  seated  at  the  table  of  a  club, 
toward  the  end  of  a  repast  which  had  been  prolonged  by  the 
conversation  of  twenty  guests.  Around  us  were  bottles  of 
Apollinaris  and  whiskey,  green  mint  in  glasses  with  cracked 
ice,  and  boxes  of  cigars,  all  symbolizing  that  which  is  least 
ideal,  least  mysterious  in  civilized  life;  and  this  strange  man 
went  on  to  speak  of  the  far  East,  of  its  religions,  with  their 
atmosphere  of  dreams,  of  the  wisdom  of  those  people,  and  of 
their  inaction.  Who  knows  but  that  certain  powers  of  mysti 
cism,  to-day  almost  abolished  in  the  modern  world,  will  again 
wake  up,  and  certain  faculties  of  the  mind  temporarily  para 
lyzed,  begin  to  work  again;  who  knows  whether  our  humanity 
will  not  see  again  a  period  analogous  to  that  of  the  Alexan 
drians  and  the  Gnostics,  or,  more  correctly,  of  the  Brahmins? 
It  would  be  one  of  the  greatest  ironies  of  nature  if  a  future 
awakening  of  the  so-called  occult  sciences  should  have  one  of 
its  starting-points  in  America. 

At  all  events,  researches  in  morbid  psychology  have  no 
where  been  pushed  further  than  here,  and  for  this  reason  alone 
it  is  worth  while  to  tell  of  this  visit  to  the  hermitage  of  Mrs. 

N .  When  she  awoke  from  her  sleep,  she  seized  my 

companion  and  myself,  each  by  the  arm,  with  a  tragic  gesture. 
Thus  she  remained  some  seconds,  clearly  without  recognizing 
us.  Then  a  kind  of  pale  smile  came  over  her  tired  face. 
The  "seer"  gave  way  to  the  simple  person  of  New  England, 
who  offered  us  tea  with  a  voice  which  had  become  soft 
again.  She  seemed  to  have  completely  forgotten  —  indeed, 
she  had  completely  forgotten  —  the  singular  doctor  with  the 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  359 

Irish  accent,  who  had  gone  into  some  country  far  from  ours. 
Vanished,  but  where?  Chimera  of  her  imagination?  Inven 
tion  of  her  will?  Supra-sensible  reality?  Who  can  unriddle 
this  enigma? 

It  would  be  unjust,  in  these  few  notes  on  American  recrea 
tions,  not  to  mention  the  lively  interest  which  the  cultivated 
people  of  this  country  —  and  they  are  legion  —  profess  for  the 
pleasures  of  the  intellect.  I  have  already  tried  to  note,  as 
regards  conversation  in  society,  the  part  their  intelligence 
has  to  play  in  it,  how  much  the  will  has  to  do  with  it,  resulting 
in  what  I  have  called  the  "point  of  view."  When  Americans 
turn  toward  the  intellectual  side  of  life,  then  the  words  of  the 
anchorite  of  the  Middle  Ages  become  true.  Their  ear  is 
really  not  satisfied  with  hearing,  just  as  their  eye  is  not  satis 
fied  with  seeing. 

Through  his  intense  and  ever-active  curiosity,  the  Ameri 
can,  that  son  of  a  recent  nation,  has  reached  that  condi 
tion  of  mind  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of  considering  as  the 
supreme  vice  and  the  last  refinement  of  a  century  of  decay, 
namely,  dilettantism.  I  have  found  this  condition  of  mind, 
which  consists  in  entering  through  thought  into  the  most  diffi 
cult  and  contradictory  forms  of  life,  adopting  them  in  order 
to  study  and  understand  them,  in  a  higher  state  of  development 
in  the  United  States  than  anywhere  else.  I  have  concluded 
from  it  that  we  moralists  of  old  Europe  are  very  wrong  in 
attributing  to  this  condition  our  sentimental  degeneracies  and 
the  maladies  of  will,  which  really  belong  with  the  senility  of 
our  society.  Everything  is  pure  to  the  pure,  says  a  proverb, 
often  incorrectly  interpreted.  It  is  also  true  that  in  the  moral 
domain  everything  is  healthy  to  the  healthy  and  unhealthy 
to  the  unhealthy.  This  is  a  conclusion  most  frequently  forced 
upon  me  in  the  course  of  this  journey.  It  is  at  once  consol 
ing  and  cruel, —  consoling  because  it  diminishes  our  own  and 
our  fathers'  share  of  the  responsibility  for  the  maladies  with 


360  OUTRE-MER 

which  we  see  Europe  afflicted,  and  cruel  —  but  do  I  need  to 
say  why  ? 

This  dilettantism  of  the  cultivated  Americans  is  recognized 
more  particularly  in  the  literary  clubs,  clubs  which  they  like 
to  call  Bohemian,  although  between  the  true  Bohemianism 
and  these  organizations,  with  their  practical  comfort,  there  is 
all  the  difference  between  a  hotel  of  the  new  style,  with  elec 
tricity,  hot  water,  and  elevators  and  a  pension  bonrgeoise  of 
the  rue  de  la  Clef. 

One  of  the  most  representative  clubs  which  I  saw  was  the 
Tavern  Club,  of  Boston.  It  occupies  three  floors  of  a  small 
house,  the  interior  partitions  of  which  have  been  knocked 
out,  in  order  to  form  large  rooms.  The  ground-floor  serves 
as  a  smoking-room  and  ante-chamber,  and  the  first  floor  is  a 
dining-room.  Above  is  a  kind  of  hall  where  music  is  played 
and  private  theatricals  given. 

This  club  corresponds  well  enough  to  certain  societies  that 
formerly  existed  in  the  Latin  Quarter, —  such  as  the  Hydro- 
paths,  whose  founder,  the  poet,  6mile  Goudeau,  has  written  a 
clever  and  lively  history  of  it  in  a  small  volume  entitled  Ten 
Years  of  Bohemianism.  I  may  remark  in  passing  that  this 
book,  which  has  attracted  little  notice,  is,  according  to  my 
mind,  a  most  exact  contribution  to  the  history  of  the  habits 
and  the  ideas  of  our  literary  youth  between  1870  and  1880. 
The  literary  youth  of  Boston,  young  writers,  young  painters, 
and  young  musicians,  founded  this  Tavern  Club.  The  fol 
lowing  are  some  of  the  features  of  difference  which  I  have 
noticed  while  frequenting  this  club  and  similar  ones  in  New 
York  and  elsewhere;  they  appear  to  me  to  characterize  well 
enough  the  particularly  healthy  state  of  American  dilettan 
tism  :  — 

i.  The  respect  of  the  young  for  their  elders,  and  also  the 
respect  of  the  elders  for  the  young.  The  president  of  the 
Tavern  Club,  for  instance,  is  the  distinguished  Professor 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  361 

Norton,  of  Cambridge,  and  when  the  club  gives  its  monthly 
dinner,  white-haired  judges,  bankers,  doctors,  are  there,  seated 
at  the  table  with  all  the  youngsters.  The  American  who  is 
concerned  with  intellectual  life  no  more  hesitates  in  the  pur 
suit  of  novelty  than  one  engaged  in  business  in  the  pursuit 
of  fortune.  You  will  hear  an  aged  collector  of  pictures 
discussing  with  a  stripling  about  to  start  for  Paris  the  works 
of  Degas  or  of  Gustave  Moreau,  with  the  same  supple 
ness  of  intellect  which  another  will  develop  in  speaking  to  a 
writer  of  romance  of  Flaubert,  of  the  brothers  de  Goncourt, 
or  of  Maupassant.  There  is  a  great  deal  gained  by  this  inter 
course  of  men  of  various  ages  with  one  another. 

But  is  it  not  rather  an  effect  than  a  cause?  The  oppositions 
of  taste  and  the  disagreements  between  men  of  different  ages 
which  exist  among  us  arise  from  the  totally  different  ways  of 
living  of  these  classes.  I  imagine  that  the  young  Parisians 
of  to-day  are  not  very  different  from  those  whom  I  knew 
when  I  was  under  thirty.  We  were  in  a  revolt  against  our 
elders  in  all  that  concerned  sentiments  and  habits.  It  is  not 
so  in  America,  where  literary  and  artistic  tastes  are  purely 
intellectual.  I  have  already  remarked,  in  regard  to  Harvard, 
that  a  liking  for  French  writers  of  the  Extreme  Left  is  both 
frequent  and  innocent.  Just  so  we  see  one  of  Che'ret's  adver 
tising  sheets,  representing  the  Moulin  Rouge,  decorating  the 
walls  of  the  Tavern  Club,  alongside  a  copy  of  "The  Spinners," 
of  Velasquez,  that  picture  in  which  a  woman's  throat  is  painted 
with  such  power.  The  little  figure  of  the  Parisian  gutter 
woman  has  here  just  the  value  of  those  pretty  little  Greek 
courtesans  who  have  become  the  statuettes  of  Tanagra ! 

2.  The  profound  knowledge  of  foreign  literatures  and  arts. 
The  few  names  which  I  have  quoted  are  so  celebrated,  that  to 
mention  them  alone  proves  a  certain  amount  of  reading,  but 
these  people  utter  these  and  twenty  others,  with  references 
which  reveal  not  a  superficial,  reading  acquaintance  with 


362  OUTRE-MER 

them,  but  serious  and  conscientious  study, —  I  will  not  say  a 
complete  comprehension.  For  the  best-informed  dilettan 
tism  is  often  a  little  uncertain  when  it  applies  itself  to  writers 
of  a  foreign  country. 

I  thus  heard  at  Oxford  one  of  the  most  exquisite  critics  of 
our  age,  the  regretted  Walter  Pater,  speaking  to  me  in  the 
same  sentence  of  Flaubert  and  Feuillet,  as  the  two  French 
prose  writers  that  he  liked  the  best,  associating  in  similar 
admiration  and  for  the  same  reasons  two  styles,  the  difference 
between  which,  absolute  as  it  is,  he  did  not  perceive.  At 
other  times  these  impressions  of  foreigners  are  singularly 
suggestive,  and  show  us  unexpected  depths  in  the  works  of 
our  own  country. 

At  a  dinner  at  one  of  these  clubs,  a  guest  had  just  quoted 
the  witty  saying  of  old  Professor  Jowett,  of  Oxford,  the  master 
of  Balliol :  "  It  is  not  lasciate  ogni  speranm  which  is  written 
over  the  door  of  hell,  but  rather,  'here  they  read  French 
novels, '  "  when  another  guest  rose  and  proposed  a  toast  to 
Zola,  with  the  sentiment  that  sympathy  for  the  sinner  is  the 
soul  of  that  great  romance  writer's  works,  and  describing  this 
as  one  of  the  most  beneficent  and  humane  sentiments  in  an  era 
in  which  the  influence  of  surroundings  on  the  development 
of  personality  has  been  recognized  by  science  as  a  fundamen 
tal  law. 

"  If  we  do  not  join  to  justice  pity  for  those  who  are  the 
victims  of  it,  what  place  do  we  give  to  justice  in  our  universe?  " 

I  wish  that  the  enemies  of  the  admirable  author  of  Ger 
minal  and  La  Debacle  who  reproach  him  for  giving  foreigners 
a  bad  impression  of  French  literature,  had  been  present  at 
that  banquet  and  heard  that  defence  uttered  amid  the  ap 
plause  of  all,  in  one  of  the  most  respectable  cities  of  New 
England. 

3.  The  absence  of  every  element  of  libertinage  in  conver 
sation  and  in  the  mind.  This  is  the  true  sign  of  great  Intel- 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  363 

lectuality.  This  quality  admits  of  breadth  of  apprehension, 
as  may  be  seen  by  the  example  which  I  have  just  quoted.  I 
am  sure  that  the  very  sincere  severity  shown  to  certain  French 
writers  by  excellent  judges  in  France  is  owing  to  the  fact  that 
sexual  life  occupies  an  exceptionally  prominent  place  in  our 
habits.  We  very  rarely  find  an  inhabitant  of  the  Latin  coun 
tries  who  can  consider  a  book  which  treats  of  the  passion  of 
love  with  absolute  independence  of  judgment.  His  imagina 
tion  is  either  tickled  or  disgusted.  When,  on  the  contrary, 
an  Anglo-Saxon  can  free  himself  from  hypocrisy  and  cant, 
all  serious  study  of  the  human  soul,  daring  as  it  may  be, 
seems  to  him  legitimate.  I  had  noted  this  feature,  so  little 
observed  and  yet  so  logical,  while  talking  of  Baudelaire  with 
the  youths  of  Harvard.  But  I  could  quote  twenty  examples 
of  it,  derived  from  a  quality  which  is  entirely  to  the  honor 
of  that  great  democracy,  at  times  so  coarse,  namely,  the 
worship  of  talent. 

Though  it  is  by  no  means  exceptional,  I  have  nowhere  rec 
ognized  this  rare  and  delicate  sentiment  more  than  in  Boston. 
It  is  the  contrary  which  is  the  exception;  namely,  that  spirit 
of  disparagement  evinced  by  derogatory  anecdotes  in  which 
so  much  envy  is  concealed.  I  could  mention  certain  houses 
that  are  veritable  museums  of  literary  piety,  one,  among 
others,  all  the  windows  of  which  open  out  on  the  Charles 
River.  The  aged  lady  who  lives  there,  the  wife  of  an  editor, 

Mrs.  F ,  has  made  her  house  one  of  the  most  significant 

museums  which  I  visited.  I  saw  there  a  portrait  of  Dickens 
as  a  young  man  with  long,  flowing  hair,  a  feminine  face, 
almost  the  pendant  of  the  admirable  head  of  George  Sand, 
painted  by  Delacroix,  with  deep  black  eyes,  which  used  to 
light  up  the  severe  cabinet  of  old  Buloz. 

Letters  and  manuscripts  of  the  great  man  lay  around,  show 
ing  one  of  those  cramped  and  nervous  handwritings  which 
revealed  the  abuse  of  "copy."  The  mistress  of  the  house 


364  OUTRE-MER 

described  him  to  me  as  he  sat  in  that  same  room  after  his 
reading,  exhausted  by  his  nervous  effort,  merry,  however, 
and  full  of  anecdotes. 

The  last  time  he  came  to  the  United  States  nothing  amused 
him  so  much  as  the  artless  form  of  flattery  devised  by  a 
mother  of  a  family  who  had  asked  him  to  dinner.  He  arrived 
and  found  a  child  in  the  first  room. 

"What  is  your  name?  "  asked  the  writer. 

"David  Copperfield,"  replied  the  little  boy. 

"And  yours?"  asked  Dickens  of  another  who  entered. 

"Oliver  Twist,"  was  the  reply. 

"And  I  am  Little  Dorrit,"  said  a  small  girl. 

"And  I  am  Florence  Dombey,"  said  another. 

Dickens  was  very  much  out  of  health  when  this  adventure 
occurred.  Gout  made  every  movement  painful,  and  the  results 
of  overwork  had  already  begun  to  make  his  remunerative  read 
ings  very  arduous.  However,  in  relating  this  story  he  showed 
all  the  gayety  of  his  first  visit  to  the  United  States. 

Opposite  his  romantic  head,  is  the  lined  and  thoughtful 
face  of  the  powerful  analyst,  Thackeray.  A  slip  of  paper  is 
fastened  below,  on  which  we  read,  traced  in  microscopic 
characters,  this  brief  adieu :  — 

"Good-bye,  Mrs.  F ,  good-bye,  my  dear  F ,  good 
bye  to  all.  I  go  home." 

He  had  been  a  month  in  America,  occupied  with  engage 
ments  of  extreme  importance.  Toward  Christmas  the  desire 
to  see  his  children  got  the  better  of  him,  and  this  note  tells 
of  the  abruptness  of  his  departure.  On  the  walls  is  also  a 
portrait  of  Carlyle  when  young,  and  it  is  very  like  Carlyle  when 
old,  in  the  depth  of  the  eyes  below  the  curve  of  the  brow,  in 
the  shape  of  the  forehead,  and  the  firmness  of  the  jaw.  That 
forehead  and  that  chin  is  all  Carlyle.  There  is  a  lack  of 
human  nature  in  that  strong  physiognomy,  too  set,  too  self- 
willed.  This  is  one  of  the  faces  that  offend  those  who  look 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  365 

at  them,  that  defy  the  spectator,  and  arm  themselves  with 
outward  arrogance  to  conceal  the  feeling  of  inward  security. 

For  my  part,  I  prefer  the  high  and  serene  beauty  of  Tenny 
son,  that  Virgil  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  who  has  so  well  known 
how  to  collect  its  waters  around  his  garden  of  dreams.  The 
fairy  of  this  little  museum  of  relics  told  me  of  a  promenade 
she  had  had  with  the  poet  in  a  real  garden  in  Surrey,  where, 
having  inhaled  the  sweet  aroma  of  the  violets,  he  said  to  her 
in  his  deep  voice :  — 

"Down  on  our  knees,  these  are  violets." 

And  he  did  as  he  had  said,  in  order  that  he  might  relig 
iously  gather  the  fragrance  of  the  flowers  without  picking 
them. 

I  like  also  the  portrait  of  noble  Emerson,  with  his  thin 
face  lighted  up  by  his  high  ideal  —  and  what  writing  is  his, 
passionate,  inspired,  from  one  end  of  the  line  to  the  other! 
Other  autographs  in  an  immense  collection  showed  the  writing 
of  Longfellow,  half  slanting,  very  firm,  very  clear,  always  the 
same;  and  the  simple  and  strong  handwriting  of  Lowell.  In 
thought  I  go  back  ten  years,  and  again  I  see  his  face,  with 
its  long  beard  and  simple  expression,  as  it  appeared  to  me  at 
the  Rabelais  Club,  in  London.  Little  did  I  suspect  then  that 
he  would  die  so  soon,  and  that  I  should  be  turning  over  his 
manuscripts  in  his  native  town,  chatting  about  him  the  while 
as  of  one  whose  recollection  is  piously  preserved,  among  many 
others. 

That  piety,  that  literary  cult  impressed  me,  touched  me. 
I  find  in  it  a  desire  to  have  celebrated  men  for  friends,  but, 
after  all,  such  a  desire  is  in  a  measure  right.  It  is  legitimate 
to  love  glorious  men,  whose  superiority  we  feel  through  their 
reputation;  especially  when  one  does  not  maliciously  draw 
attention  to  their  faults  for  the  petty  pleasure  of  humiliating 
that  superiority.  Americans  may  have  many  faults,  but  they 
are  certainly  neither  small  nor  mean. 


366  OUTRE-MER 

Another  feature  of  intellectual  dilettantism,  in  the  particular 
phase  which  it  takes  in  America,  is  the  search  for  sensations 
by  travelling,  and  by  travelling  in  a  large  and  audacious  way 
bewildering  to  our  European  imagination — at  least  it  would 
have  been  so  if  Pierre  Loti  had  not  somewhat  accustomed  us 
to  the  most  distant  journeyings.  But  Loti  remains  alone 
among  us.  I  am  not  sure  that  criticism  would  permit  even 
him  those  wanderings  in  Japan  or  Oceania,  if  the  great  writer 
had  not  the  excuse  of  his  calling  to  offer  for  those  expe 
ditions,  which  he  tells  of  with  the  grace  of  a  poet  sensitive 
even  to  painfulness  and  delicate  almost  to  morbidness.  To 
an  American  artist,  on  the  contrary,  those  journeyings  through 
the  vast  world  in  quest  of  a  little  fresh  beauty  seem  so  natural 
that  neither  the  public,  nor  himself,  even  thinks  of  noticing 
their  dangers  and  eccentricities.  I  remember  hearing  an 
American  writer  say  to  me  :  — 

"I  shall  return  to  Japan  next  year  for  the  flower  season," 
just  as  simply  as  he  would  have  announced  to  me  a  trip  from 
Paris  to  Saint-Germain. 

This  passion  for  long  journeys  is  so  common  that  it  has 
modified  the  system  of  holidays  for  professors  in  the  most 
unexpected  manner.  They  have  every  seven  years  a  full  year 
of  holiday,  which  they  call  the  "Sabbatical  year,"  and  which 
they  employ  in  visits  to  Europe,  to  Africa,  or  to  Asia,  accord 
ing  to  the  needs  of  their  studies  or  their  curiosity. 

Nowhere  have  I  more  strongly  felt  the  influence  of  travel 
upon  the  intellectual  American  than  in  New  York,  in  the  studio 
of  the  admirable  painter  —  who  is  too  little  known  among  us 
in  spite  of  his  French  name  —  John  La  Farge.  The  man  him 
self,  who  is  no  longer  very  young,  with  his  refined  face  and 
white  skin,  as  though  dried  up  by  internal  heat,  with  his  rest 
less  eyes  in  strongly  outlined,  drawn  eyelids,  gives  a  good 
impression  of  one  of  those  nervous  activities  which  no  effort 
satisfies,  which  no  experience  appeases,  and  which  are  ever 


AMERICAN   PLEASURES  367 

searching  and  in  motion.  He  has  invented  a  new  process  for 
stained  glass;  he  has  exercised  himself  in  decoration  and  illus 
tration,  in  painting  in  oils  and  in  wax,  in  vast  altar  pieces, 
such  as  the  grandiose  and  delicate  "Ascension"  of  the  Fifth 
Avenue  Episcopal  Church,  and  in  pastels,  and  only  a  few 
months  ago  he  was  travelling  about  through  the  Pacific  Islands 
—  Samoa,  Tahiti,  the  Fijis. 

"We  wanted  to  go  very  far,"  said  he  to  me.  "Japan  is  too 
near.  They  have  the  telegraph  there.  The  Pacific  always 
means  two  months  without  news." 

That  is  the  longing  of  the  artist,  tired  of  conventional  life, 
tired  of  the  railroad,  of  the  telephone,  of  all  that  facilitates 
business  and  saves  time,  hungering  after  novel  sensations, 
and  above  all  devoted  to  his  art;  valiantly,  heroically  resolved 
to  live  only  for  his  thoughts,  during  days  and  days;  and  while 
that  cold,  snowy  January  afternoon  was  freezing  the  town,  those 
islets  scattered  on  the  map  became  alive,  bright,  and  green 
for  me  in  pictures  and  water-colors  of  this  refined  painterx 
whose  smallest  works  show  him  to  be  of  the  race  of  Fromen- 
tin,  the  visionary,  who  thinks  his  feelings  —  a  rare  power. 
Here  are  branches  too  green,  at  the  edge  of  a  too  blue  sea; 
the  veins  of  the  leaves  seem  saturated  with  water,  and  tell 
of  the  eternal  humidity  of  the  air.  Banana  trees  rear  their 
straight  trunks,  bearing  their  long  supple  leaf -blades.  Cocoa- 
nut  trees  wave  their  palms  in  the  ceaseless  Pacific  wind, 
the  wind  that  goes,  like  the  immense  swell  of  the  wide  ocean, 
from  one  pole  to  the  other.  The  burao,  a  large  tree  with  a 
knotted  trunk,  spreads  out  its  broad  leaves  like  those  of  our 
fig  trees.  Flowers  everywhere,  above  all,  the  flat-petalled, 
full-blown  corollas  of  the  strange  hibiscus.  In  this  scenery 
of  nature  low  hovels  are  seen,  with  thatched  roofs  and  open 
sides,  along  which  fall  flexible  mattings. 

Men  and  women  pass  between  those  trees  at  the  edge  of  the 
sea;  some  dancing  with  crowns  of  roses;  others,  hidden  by 


368  OUTRE-MER 

branches,  cowering  on  the  earth  in  wait  to  commit  murder; 
others  carrying  on  their  shoulders  light  skiffs  ;  others  em 
barked  in  similar  boats  going  forth  to  fish.  And  around  them 
is  that  trim  landscape,  cleaned,  almost  combed. 

"The  savage,"  says  the  painter,  profoundly,  "is  the  old- 
fashioned  gentleman,  the  gentleman  of  tradition,  who  does 
everything  according  to  custom,  and  who  does  not  wish  to 
change  his  habits;  "  and,  showing  a  young  girl,  who  is  shoot 
ing  a  canoe  across  an  apparently  fearful  cascade,  he  adds: 
"She  is  not  frightened;  for  there  is  not  a  turn  of  the  ground 
which  she  does  not  know,  not  a  pebble  which  has  not  been  in 
the  same  place  for  centuries,  out  of  the  water  and  under  the 
water.  In  that  country,  when  you  hurt  your  foot,  you  say, 
'Sure  enough,  my  grandfather  told  me  there  was  a  stone  on 
that  road ! '  " 

Above  all,  the  bathing  scenes  are  charming  to  behold. 
Wide  rivers  flow  through  the  woods,  and  women  throw  them 
selves  into  the  water,  blue  with  the  reflection  of  the  sky,  with 
noble,  antique  immodesty.  Children  play  in  the  surf  of  the 
ocean.  The  wave  breaks  on  reefs,  and,  in  places  where  it 
drags  along  the  coral  bottom,  its  green  shade  becomes  so  pure 
and  so  intense  that  it  takes  the  coloring  of  a  precious  stone. 
At  other  times,  at  sunset,  it  is  quite  rosy.  The  brown  and 
lissome  nudity  of  the  savage  is  outlined  on  this  blue  ocean 
with  the  fineness  of  an  antique  bronze. 

You  feel  the  soft  and  caressing  atmosphere,  where  the 
human  animal  is  happy  in  an  almost  vegetative  felicity,  where 
it  is  languid  as  a  plant.  Tahitian  women,  sitting  around  the 
fire,  which  lights  them  up  fantastically,  their  bodies  clothed 
in  long  dresses  of  light  material,  with  straw  hats  on  their 
small  heads,  seem  to  be  playing  at  winter,  while  other  groups 
make  up  scenes  of  Biblical  or  Hellenic  grandeur :  a  blind  and 
naked  old  man,  led  by  a  child;  a  dark  youth  galloping  on 
horseback,  at  the  edge  of  the  sea;  dances, —  bacchanalian,  I 


AMERICAN  PLEASURES  369 

was  about  to  say, —  where  the  thick  foliage  of  the  wreaths  worn 
by  the  wild  female  dancers  recalls  the  festivals  in  the  ravines 
of  Taygeta,  celebrated  by  the  poet :  — 

.  .  .  et  virginibus  bacchata  Lacoenis 
Taygeta.  .  .  . 

The  joy  of  the  artist  as  he  shows  these  studies  is  pleasing  to 
witness.  His  eye  warms,  delighting  itself  again  in  that  light, 
his  mind  goes  back  to  that  primitive  life  with  the  delight  of 
second  youth  and  of  initiation.  He  raises  the  stole  of  the 
Buddhist  priest,  which  veils  an  unfinished  picture,  and  with 
the  action  reveals  a  figure  painted  in  wax,  with  colors  so 
blended  as  to  be  almost  indistinguishable.  A  woman  is 
seated,  her  feet  crossed,  her  arms  folded,  her  eyelids  lowered, 
clothed  in  material  of  a  marvellous  tissue,  so  diaphanous  that 
it  seems  about  to  melt  away  in  the  light  of  an  aureole  which 
she  herself  seems  to  project.  A  cascade  falls  at  the  side  of 
this  enigmatic  form,  the  water  flowing  endlessly,  symbol  of 
time  that  passes  in  eternal  flight. 

The  young  goddess,  nevertheless,  remains  motionless  in 
her  youth,  whose  serenity  seems  to  have  been  attained 
through  storms.  She  is  the  Goddess  of  Meditation,  "the 
being  who  sees  sounds,"  as  the  artist  tells  me.  Silent,  dead 
to  life,  absorbed  in  her  dream,  she  spreads  peacefulness 
around  her.  The  grand  lesson  of  the  nullity  of  human 
activity  comes  from  the  farthest  East  to  this  country  of  in 
tense  effort.  The  fever  of  culture,  with  which  these  men  are 
possessed,  makes  them  capable  of  understanding  through 
innumerable  experiences,  and  of  translating  into  palpable 
form,  the  poetry  of  meditative  passiveness,  so  contrary  to 
their  race.  As  after  reading  certain  novels  by  Henry  James, 
so,  too,  on  leaving  John  La  Farge's  studio,  I  have  the  im 
pression,  nay,  rather  the  evidence,  that  the  American  soul, 
when  once  it  sees  the  beauty  of  being  Delicate,  reaches  acute 
BB 


370  OUTRE-MER 

shades  of  analysis  and  unequalled  visions.  But  the  painter, 
like  the  writer  of  romance,  is  solitary.  Neither  forms  a 
part  of  a  school  or  even  of  a  group.  Personality,  the  un 
changeable  individuality  of  their  culture,  is  still  a  feature  of 
this  country,  and  one  which  does  not  admit  of  the  predic 
tion  that  there  will  ever  be  any  American  art.  Nevertheless, 
there  are,  at  the  present  day,  very  great  and  admirable  Ameri 
can  artists,  and  that  is  enough,  after  all,  for  the  glory  of  a 
people. 


IX 

DOWN   SOUTH 
I.    In   Georgia 

The  author  begs  the  reader  to  look  upon  this  narrative  as  a  "short 
story,"  all  the  facts  in  which  are  true,  but  in  which  the  author,  for  personal 
reasons,  has  been  obliged  to  make  several  alterations.  —  P.  B. 

THE  misfortune  of  a  somewhat  prolonged  journey  in  the 
United  States  is  that  you  begin  to  recognize  at  each  fresh 
halting-place  that  the  country  is  really  too  vast,  too  complex; 
that  after  having  amassed  mountains  of  notes,  there  are  still 
mountains  to  amass;  that  after  having  lived  in  this  or  that 
town  a  month,  it  would  be  necessary  to  live  there  a  year;  that 
after  having  studied  this  or  that  class  of  people,  thousands  of 
other  classes  remain  yet  to  be  studied. 

I  especially  felt  this  immensity,  this  complexity,  during 
the  course  of  an  excursion  through  the  South,  of  which  I 
retain  memories  that  I  shall  not  attempt  to  connect  with  the 
preceding  notes.  This  is  perhaps  the  best  way  of  making 
this  travelling  journal  conform  to  reality.  For,  indeed, 
Charleston  passed,  a  fresh  country  begins.  The  flora  changes 
as  well  as  the  sky,  the  fauna  as  well  as  the  people.  The  real 
reasons  which  precipitated  these  two  worlds  at  each  other's 
throats,  using  slavery  as  a  pretext,  appear  to  you  as  clear  as 
do  those  which  caused  the  war  of  1870,  when  you  cross  the 
Rhine.  But  the  wounds  of  our  ancient  Europe,  like  those  in 
a  poisoned  body  that  has  lost  the  power  of  creating  fresh  cuti 
cle,  have  not  closed;  while,  in  the  American  nation,  they 


372  OUTRE-MER 

have  not  only  healed,  but  have  been  forgotten.  The  difficult 
task  has  been  entered  upon  of  finally  mixing,  blending,  and 
amalgamating  these  two  portions  of  a  vast  empire,  this  North 
and  this  South,  so  naturally,  so  radically  antithetic. 

You  open  a  chance  newspaper,  in  the  train  that  carries  you 
toward  Charleston,  and  you  see  that  the  present  Speaker  of 
Congress,  corresponding  to  our  President  of  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  was  formerly  an  officer  in  the  Confederate  army. 
Prisoner  of  war  for  a  year,  he  began  the  study  of  law  immedi 
ately  peace  was  concluded.  He  has  had  a  career  as  a  lawyer, 
and  is  now  one  of  the  important  leaders  of  the  Democratic 
party.  Mr.  Wilson  is  another  illustration  of  the  same  state 
of  affairs, —  the  Mr.  Wilson  who  is  so  popular,  the  applauded 
author  of  a  celebrated  bill,  the  man  whom  I  saw  the  other 
day  in  Congress  carried  in  triumph  upon  the  shoulders  of  his 
admirers,  after  a  speech,  with  a  basket  of  roses  in  his  arms. 

The  flow  of  life  has  resumed  its  course  in  this  powerful 
organism;  and  of  a  terrible  war,  lasting  several  years,  — a  war 
of  races,  a  war  of  climates,  a  war  of  principles,  a  war  of  inter 
ests,  a  war  of  pride,  —  there  remains  no  other  trace  than  that 
contained  in  the  list  of  pensions  inscribed  on  the  budget. 
This  list,  a  fact  almost  incomprehensible  to  one  not  initiated 
in  the  hidden  workings  of  American  politics,  increases  in 
amount  as  the  war  period  is  left  behind. 

The  soldiers  of  the  North  and  the  soldiers  of  the  South 
meet  and  fraternize,  just  as  though  the  slaughters  of  Chancel- 
lorsville  and  Gettysburg  had  never  taken  place.  No,  I  am 
mistaken.  The  heroic  struggle  has  left  more  noble  traces 
than  a  shameful  abuse  of  war  pensions.  It  has  left  the  mem 
ory  of  a  common  bravery,  a  proof  that  American  industrialism 
has  not  diminished  the  energy  of  the  race.  It  has  left  the 
legend  of  Lincoln,  of  one  of  those  men  who,  simply  by  the 
propagation  of  their  example,  mould  in  their  image  the  con 
science  of  an  entire  country.  This  personage,  so  American  by 


DOWN   SOUTH  373 

the  composite  character  of  his  being,  humorous  and  pathetic 
at  one  and  the  same  time;  this  politician,  acquainted  with  all 
artifices  and  trickeries,  and  yet  so  capable  of  idealism  and 
mysticism;  this  half-educated  man,  with  his  magnificent  sim 
plicities  of  eloquence;  this  former  woodman,  his  face  embit 
tered  with  disappointment  and  luminous  with  hope,  enfeebled 
by  trial  and  yet  so  strong;  this  statesman,  close  to  the  people, 
and  yet  gifted  with  such  amplitude  of  vision,  —  is  the  most 
modern  of  heroes,  one  whom  the  United  States  may  safely 
compare  with  Napoleon,  with  Cavour,  with  Bismarck.  To-day 
the  South  recognizes  his  grandeur,  as  well  as  the  North.  He 
had  the  good  fortune  to  be  just  the  workman  that  was  neces 
sary  for  the  task  he  undertook,  and  to  die  immediately  his  task 
was  accomplished.  Great  destinies  are  made  up  of  such  timely 
hazards. 

In  selecting  as  the  first  stopping-place  in  my  Southern  travels 
a  little  town  in  Georgia,  I  was  trying  to  realize  a  desire  to 
meet  an  old  officer  of  the  Northern  army,  a  particular  friend 
of  the  great  President.  His  name  I  must  also  keep  secret.  I 
will  simply  call  him  Colonel  Scott,  a  disguise  that  will  not 
hide  him  from  his  acquaintances.  A  mutual  friend,  who  had 
given  me  a  letter  for  him  in  Washington,  described  him  to 
me.  "Prepare,"  he  said,  "to  meet  one  of  the  most  compli 
cated  of  men,  a  many-sided  man,  as  we  say.  You  will  see 
for  yourself.  He  comes  originally  from  Massachusetts  and 
there  is  the  Puritan  in  him  yet.  He  has  been  through  the  war, 
and  he  is  still  a  soldier.  .  He  has  studied  medicine,  and  he 
is  something  of  a  scientist.  Then  he  went  into  business  and 
directed  a  large  company  manufacturing  uniform  and  livery 
buttons,  so  that  he  is  somewhat  of  a  tradesman.  Besides  this 
there  is  in  him  a  little  of  the  landed  proprietor,  of  the  gen 
tleman  farmer,  ever  since  he  purchased  a  large  plantation  in 
the  South  on  account  of  his  daughter's  health.  And  he  is, 
above  all,  a  charming  personality,  charitable  and  honest,  full 


374  OUTRE-MER 

of  curious  memories  of  Lincoln,  Grant,  Hooker,  Sherman. 
Certainly  you  must  have  a  chat  with  him." 

I  arrived,  then,  at  Philippeville  —  that  is  the  pseudonym  I 
shall  ask  the  reader  to  accept  for  this  little  city  in  Georgia  — 
toward  the  middle  of  the  month  of  March.  My  first  step  was 
to  ask  the  address  of  Mr.  Scott.  I  was  told  that  he  lived  only 
about  two  miles  from  the  town,  but  that  I  ought  to  write  to 
him  in  order  that  I  might  not  make  the  journey  uselessly. 

"He  is  passionately  fond  of  hunting,"  added  Mr.  Williams, 
the  hotel  proprietor,  who  gave  me  these  details.  "  He  some 
times  remains  out  three  or  four  days  without  returning  to 
the  house.  You  know,  sir,  that  we  have  the  best  hunting 
in  America  here;  deer,  duck,  wild  turkey,  partridge,  quail, 
and  not  a  single  wild  animal,  not  a  bear,  not  a  puma.  Ah, 
Philippeville  beats  every  town  in  the  South." 

"Not  a  wild  animal  ?"  said  I.  "And  the  alligators  and  the 
rattlesnakes?  " 

"Oh,  they're  all  down  there  in  Florida,"  he  replied. 
"Why,  my  dear  sir,  I've  been  here  for  twenty  years  during 
the  winter  and  spring,  and  I've  never  seen  a  bigger  snake 
than  an  adder." 

The  worthy  Mr.  Williams  neglected  to  add  that,  during 
these  twenty  years  of  residence,  he  had  not  quitted  his  hotel 
a  hundred  times,  a  hotel  which,  by  the  way,  realized  an 
ideal  of  comfort  for  travellers.  He  treated  all  travellers 
like  friends,  as  careful  of  their  well-being  and  recreation  as 
though  he  had  really  been  the  host  of  some  country-seat  where 
was  gathered  a  group  of  invited  guests.  I  do  not  think  you 
will  meet  anywhere  in  the  world,  save  in  America,  this  type 
of  hotel  proprietor,  a  man  perfectly  well-mannered,  a  man 
who  dines  in  evening  dress  every  day  in  the  common  dining- 
hall,  opposite  his  wife,  who  is  also  in  evening  toilette,  and  who 
then  passes  the  evening  in  the  drawing-room,  chatting  and 
listening  to  an  orchestra  engaged  for  the  season.  I  engaged  a 


D\VX    SOUTH  375 

small  light  carriage  on  tf  morrow  of  my  arrival  in  Philippe- 
ville;  and  passing  down  le  long  route,  bordered  by  wooden 
cabins  and  populated  byiegroes,  went  with  my  black  coach 
man  through  a  great  fore  of  pitch  pines,  strewn  with  honey 
suckles  in  full  bloom  ai  as  high  as  ourselves,  and  finally 
arrived  at  a  large  open  tonstile  upon  which  were  written  the 
simple  words:  "Scott's  Lice." 

I  can  see  myself  againas  though  in  a  dream,  alighting  from 
the  little  carriage  and  v.'king  up  a  winding  path,  bordered 
by  trees  of  odorous  frajrjice,  and  I  again  see,  at  the  end  of 
the  path,  the  large,  low  :  :se  which  was  evidently  that  of  the 
master.  It  was  built  ofrvood,  like  those  of  the  negroes  of 
Philippeville,  but  of  van-shed  wood,  lacquered  yellow,  with 
the  roof  painted  a  sombt  red,  and  surrounded  with  a  wooden 
veranda  painted  a  bluish  hite. 

I  had  not  to  take  the  tmble  of  ringing  and  asking  for  the 
master  of  this  Southern  ccntry-seat,  so  peaceful  and  so  coquet 
tish,  with  its  one  stony  nd  with  its  garment  of  clambering 
roses.  A  troop  of  fifteen  twenty  negroes,  men,  women,  and 
children,  clustered  beforelie  staircase,  ranged  in  a  circle  round 
a  man  of  about  sixty  yeac  of  age,  very  tall,  very  red,  but  still 
robust  and  slender,  in  a  hntsman's  costume,  with  high  leather 
gaiters  and  a  striped  velv.  jacket.  The  Colonel,  for  it  was  he, 
did  not  perceive  my  ap;:v-:ch  any  more  than  did  the  negroes 
who  surrounded  him,  reoiing  him  with  breathless  attention, 
so  absorbed  were  they  alin  some  strange  task.  Colonel  Scott 
was  bending  over  a  rath  .large  wooden  box  of  open  lattice 
work,  that  appeared  to  cc:ain  some  singular  animal  in  a  state 
of  extreme  irritation,  tojudge  from  the  sounds  that  issued 
from  it  —  sounds  that  rambled  a  file  rubbed  furiously  on 
some  extremely  hard  subance.  He  held  in  his  right  hand  a 
stick,  at  the  end  of  whic  he  had  fixed  an  enormous  wad  of 
cotton,  and  he  worked  tl;  stick  about  through  the  interstices 
of  the  box,  while  he  pouri  in  it  with  his  right  hand  the  con- 


376  OUTRE-MER 

tents  of  a  large  bottle  full  of  a  water-colored  liquid.  I  recog 
nized  almost  immediately  the  sickly-sweet  odor  of  chloro 
form.  What  was  the  animal  the  Colonel  was  trying  to  stupefy 
in  this  way?  The  filing  sound  became  more  and  more  feeble. 
You  could  hear  it  dying  away  like  the  moaning  of  an  invalid 
succumbing  under  the  influence  of  some  powerful  anaesthetic. 

A  negro  said,  "He's  asleep  now."  The  Colonel  emptied 
the  remainder  of  the  bottle  into  the  box,  stirring  around, 
meanwhile,  the  baton  —  I  suppose  to  make  all  sure.  Then, 
taking  up  a  pair  of  pincers,  he  tore  off  one  of  the  planks  at  the 
top  and  turned  the  box  upside  down.  Out  of  it,  I  first  saw 
issue  the  monstrous  head  of  a  serpent  —  a  head  as  big  as  my 
hand,  triangular  and  flat,  with  swollen  glands  hanging  limply 
from  the  end  of  a  long  neck,  of  which  I  could  see  the  throb 
bing  throat,  with  its  white,  soft  skin.  The  long  body  un 
coiled  and  rolled  out  to  the  length  of  about  eight  feet,  thicker 
than  my  arm,  and  terminated  by  a  little  tail  composed  of  a 
dozen  rings,  looking  as  though  cut  out  of  gray  horn.  The 
sight  of  this  rattlesnake  was  so  hideous,  so  worthy  of  the  sur 
name,  atrox,  given  by  the  naturalist  to  this  variety,  —  Crotalus 
atrox,  —  that  there  was  among  the  negroes  a  hurried  attempt  to 
retreat  from  the  animal,  which  was,  nevertheless,  so  defence 
less  at  this  moment. 

The  Colonel,  with  the  rapidity  of  a  workman  who  knows 
that  every  instant  is  precious,  forced  a  stick  into  the  mouth 
i>f  this  formidable  monster.  The  raised  jaw  revealed  the 
inside  of  the  mouth,  a  horrible  red  of  living  flesh,  with  the 
thin,  bifurcated  tongue  looking  as  though  glued  to  the  palate. 
I  saw  him  with  his  free  hand  take  up  some  metal  instrument 
—  one  of  those  forceps  that  dentists  use.  He  grasped,  with 
the  pincer,  one  of  the  fangs  in  the  jaw,  which  was  beginning 
to  bleed.  A  little  effort,  and  he  dropped  upon  the  ground  one 
of  the  teeth  of  the  monster,  then  a  second,  then  a  third,  then 
a  fourth  —  four  long,  curved,  hollow  needles,  horrible  and 


DOWN  SOUTH  377 

delicate  biting  instruments,  which  at  that  very  instant  con 
tained  enough  venom  to  cause  death,  even  with  a  scratch. 
The  animal,  nevertheless,  continued  to  sleep  with  a  bloody 
foam  upon  the  borders  of  its  closed  jaw.  The  Colonel 
seized  it  by  the  middle  of  its  body,  with  his  hairy  hand, 
and  threw  the  inert  mass  into  the  box,  renailed  the  cover 
with  three  strokes  of  his  hammer,  picked  up,  one  by  one, 
the  dangerous  defences,  and  placed  them  carefully  on  the 
wooden  block  of  the  steps  devoted  to  the  use  of  the  horse 
men,  and  called  a  negro. 

"This  big  fellow  will  be  a  little  astonished  when  he  wakes. 
Take  him  away  and  don't  get  into  the  habit  of  bringing  me 
a  new  one  every  morning." 

As  he  pronounced  these  words,  his  eyes  met  mine.  They 
were  gray  eyes  that  glistened  in  the  ruddy  face  with  a  singu 
lar  brilliancy  of  youth.  He  did  not  hesitate  about  my 
identity  any  more  than  I  had  hesitated  about  his.  The  letter 
of  introduction  that  I  had  sent  him  in  the  morning,  announc 
ing  my  visit  in  the  afternoon,  left  him  no  room  for  doubt. 
He  saluted  me  by  name  while  shaking  my  hand,  and  said,  in 
French,  without  any  further  preamble,  with  the  immediate 
familiarity  of  the  American :  — 

"That's  the  sixth  that  I've  operated  upon  in  two  years,  and 
the  third  this  year.  That's  why  I  spoke  to  them  as  you  heard 
me.  Jim  Kennedy  is  the  proprietor  of  a  collection  of  mon 
sters  that  he  is  taming,  I  don't  know  how.  He  is  going  to 
show  them  from  town  to  town,  from  village  to  village,  and  to 
earn,  in  a  few  weeks,  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  live  for  months 
without  working.  That's  the  character  of  all  these  blacks," 
he  continued,  shrugging  his  shoulders;  "as  soon  as  they  have 
enough  to  eat,  they  won't  move  their  little  finger." 

"But  suppose  that  they're  happy  thus,  Colonel?  "  I  replied. 

"Happy?"  he  repeated  abruptly.  "Happy!  They're  only 
too  happy,  but  it's  a  brute's  happiness,  and  it  degrades  them 


378  OUTRE-MER 

more  than  slavery.  Yes,  sir,"  he  continued,  with  an  insistence 
in  which  I  found  the  Puritan  that  I  have  spoken  about. 
"They  were  worth  more  when  they  were  slaves,  you  may 
believe  me.  I  was  one  of  those  who  served  under  Lincoln 
with  the  utmost  enthusiasm,  and  I  don't  dispute  the  truth  of 
the  principles  we  fought  for.  No,  I  do  not  dispute  it.  He 
is  not  a  man  who  admits  that  there  can  exist  a  single  slave  in 
the  world  eighteen  hundred  years  after  Christ.  Unfortunately, 
we  imagined  that  we  had  finished  when  we  had  freed  them. 
But  that  was  too  simple.  Our  troubles  only  began  then. 
We  didn't  realize  that  a  being  of  an  inferior  race,  like  the 
negro,  could  not  pass  at  once  to  a  superior  condition  without 
danger.  You  will  see  some  sad  things  in  the  South,  sir,  if  you 
travel. 

"  But  here  I  am,  keeping  you  out  in  this  afternoon  sun,  which 
is  nothing  to  me  and  which  is  suffocating  to  you.  Come  into 
the  house,  and  be  presented  to  Miss  Scott.  It's  only  a  modest 
little  house,  but  it  will  give  you,  for  all  that,  an  idea  of  what 
the  house  of  a  slave  proprietor  in  Georgia  was  forty  years  ago. 
All  around  it,  you  see,  were  the  negro  cabins.  I  have  left 
three  or  four  of  them  standing.  The  cooking  was  done  in  that 
little  building  out  there.  Here  were  the  stables.  I  have  only 
repaired  those  which  the  Chastins  left.  That's  a  French  name, 
isn't  it  ?  It's  the  name  of  the  family  that  lived  here.  The  last 
member  of  it  has  been  dead  about  nine  years.  They  came 
from  New  Orleans.  Would  you  believe  that  after  the  war, 
ruined  by  the  emancipation  of  their  slaves  and  having  nothing 
to  live  upon  except  this  land,  they  remained  here  for  several 
years  almost  without  leaving  it,  without  cultivating  it,  killing  a 
pig  now  and  then,  hunting  a  little,  eating  tomatoes  that  were 
grown  for  them  by  a  poor  negro  who  would  not  leave  them  ? 
They  were  good  people  and  kind  masters,  and  yet  that  had  not 
prevented  them  from  selling  one  after  another  the  seven  children 
of  that  very  negro.  He  opened  the  gate  for  you,  did  he  not  ?  " 


DOWN  SOUTH  379 

"  What !  that  little  comic  personage,  with  hair  and  beard  like 
gray  moss,  like  lichen,  with  a  parchment  face?" 

"  That  very  man,"  said  the  Colonel.  "  Now,  just  see  what 
slavery  makes  of  a  man.  He  has  never  hated  his  master  for 
those  sales.  He  found,  and  he  still  finds,  it  quite  natural  that 
they  should  sell  his  sons,  just  as  they  would  sell  calves  or  suck 
ing  pigs.  He  loved  his  masters,  and  his  masters  loved  him  ! 
Such  inhumanity  is  inconceivable.  But  be  seated.  I  will  go 
for  my  daughter." 

An  oil  painting,  about  one-fifth  life  size,  somewhat  clumsily 
but  sincerely  painted,  showed  Mr.  Scott  at  twenty  years  of  age, 
wearing  his  cloak  of  cavalryman  in  the  Northern  army.  He 
was  recognizable,  even  after  half  a  century,  with  his  rude  figure 
of  improvised  officer,  just  the  parallel,  in  his  indomitable 
energy,  of  the  generals  of  our  first  revolution.  I  had  not  time 
to  make  a  more  minute  examination  of  this  salon,  nor  to  read 
the  titles  of  the  books  arranged  in  the  low  bookcase ;  for  the 
sliding  door  opened  and  I  saw  the  Colonel  enter,  pushing 
before  him,  with  all  the  delicacy  of  a  sick-nurse,  a  wheel-chair 
on  which  was  seated  a  young  woman  of  about  thirty  years  of 
age. 

The  sight  of  an  irremediable  infirmity,  particularly  when 
this  infirmity  is  allied  to  youth,  stirs  some  profound  chord  in 
the  soul.  When  youth,  thus  attacked  in  its  very  flower,  is  found 
embodied  in  a  perfectly  beautiful  and  perfectly  good  creat 
ure,  this  pity  becomes  still  more  poignant.  Miss  Ruth  Scott, 
if  you  considered  nothing  but  her  face,  had  those  large,  deli 
cate  features  which  resist  the  action  of  years.  Her  color  had 
all  the  brilliancy  given  by  magnificent  blood ;  she  had  a  finely 
curved  mouth,  in  which  a  smile  disclosed  very  large  and  very 
white  teeth  —  like  those  of  her  father.  Her  eyes  were  clear 
blue,  a  little  lighter  than  the  Colonel's,  telling  of  a  very  loving 
woman's  heart,  proud  and  delicate.  Above  her  noble  forehead 
grew  the  most  opulent  hair  in  locks  of  a  tawny  gold,  thick  and 


380  OUTRE-MER 

luxuriant  —  hair  with  which  one  might  weave  a  glorious  shim 
mering  mantle  for  the  shoulders  of  a  goddess. 

Alas  !  the  most  humble  and  the  most  implacable  of  maladies, 
—  almost  too  ridiculous  to  name  for  a  girl  of  this  age  and  of 
this  splendor,  —  rheumatism,  had  deformed  and  knotted  the 
feet,  which  one  could  not  see  under  the  shawls,  in  such  a  way 
as  to  render  futile  even  an  attempt  at  walking.  Without  any 
emotion  she  showed  her  hands  swollen  at  the  joints  —  poor, 
infirm  hands  which  could  neither  guide  a  pen  nor  hold  a 
needle.  And,  yet,  a  smiling  resignation  —  nay,  more  than 
that,  a  serious,  serene  joy  could  be  read  upon  this  face,  which 
one  would  think  ought  to  have  expressed  all  the  melancholy 
of  one  destined  to  martyrdom.  It  was  not  long  before  I 
understood  whence  came  this  serenity  of  mind  under  so  great 
and  so  incurable  a  misfortune.  Miss  Ruth  had  not  spoken  ten 
phrases  before  she  had  revealed  to  me  the  secret  of  her  inner 
strength.  Like  her  father,  she  was  possessed  by  the  idea  of 
the  responsibility  of  the  people  of  her  race  toward  the  negroes. 
And  I  recognized  in  her  at  once  that  fervor  of  proselytism 
which  is  so  difficult  for  a  Latin  to  consider  without  some  little 
suspicion. 

The  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  would,  however,  be 
inexplicable  without  this  hereditary  instinct  of  the  missionary. 
Miss  Scott  was  only  an  example  of  this  instinct,  a  more  touch 
ing  example  than  many  others  on  account  of  her  infirmity.  I 
can  still  hear  her  slightly  hard  voice  in  which  trembled  the 
reproaches  of  a  conscience  always  striving  toward  apostleship. 
And  I  can  hear  her  say  to  me,  speaking  about  those  poor 
negroes  whose  happy  heedlessness  I  had  just  been  prais 
ing:— 

"They  are  not  always  so.  There  are  racial  tragedies  even 
to-day  that  you  would  never  suspect.  About  ten  years  ago  I 
was  studying  in  Boston.  One  day  a  colored  girl  presented  her 
self  at  our  college.  The  president  had  strong  ideas  about  jus- 


DOWN   SOUTH  381 

tice.  She  assembled  us  all  and  asked  us  to  promise  that  we 
would  treat  the  newcomer  as  though  she  were  one  of  ourselves. 
Otherwise  she  would  not  receive  her.  She  gave  us  an  hour  in 
which  to  make  our  decision  as  to  whether  we  would  give  her 
this  promise  or  not.  We  deliberated  together.  As  opinion 
was  divided  on  the  question,  we  decided  to  vote  and  to  submit 
the  matter  to  the  decision  of  the  ballot.  The  result  was  favor 
able  to  the  stranger. 

"  Would  it  not  have  been  cruel,  I  ask  you,  to  deprive  her  of 
a  little  culture  on  account  of  her  blood,  particularly  as  her 
father  was  a  very  distinguished  doctor?  She  remained  among 
us  for  four  years.  She  was  intelligent,  as  the  negroes  very  often 
are,  and  scrupulously  honest,  which  they  are  not  always.  We 
liked  her  very  much,  and  even  those  who  did  not  vote  in  her 
favor  kept  their  promise  and  never  let  her  feel  that  they  con 
sidered  her  other  than  as  white.  I  suppose  she  was  happy. 
Her  father,  however,  died  and  left  her  without  fortune.  She 
had  to  return  to  Savannah  to  the  family  of  her  grandfather. 
There  this  girl,  accustomed  to  live  in  the  best  society  in  the 
North,  could  not  find  a  single  respectable  person  who  would 
receive  her,  who  would  even  recognize  her.  She  was  com 
pelled  to  mix  solely  with  the  people  of  her  race,  inferior, 
brutal,  coarse,  knowing  themselves  to  be  such,  beings  without 
instruction  and  without  education.  She  suffered  so  much  that 
she  finished  by  a  crime.  She  committed  suicide  —  threw  her 
self  into  the  water.  Isn't  that  a  tragedy,  as  I  told  you?  Is 
it  not  frightful?" 

"But  why  did  she  not  remain  in  the  North?"  I  asked. 
"Would  she  not  have  been  able  to  marry  there?" 

"  Ah,  no,"  said  the  Colonel  in  turn,  "  and  I  understand  the 
reason.  Marriages  between  negroes  and  whites  are  not  per 
mitted  in  the  United  States,  and  that  is  right.  God  has  not 
willed  that  these  races  should  mix.  The  proof  of  this  is  that 
mulattoes  have  almost  always  an  evil  nature.  No,  it  will  not  do 


382  OUTRE-MER 

to  corrupt  the  white  race  by  the  mixture  of  the  black.  One 
must  make  of  the  negro,  so  long  debased,  a  race  of  men  who 
will  be  men,  of  citizens  who  will  be  citizens,  something  other 
than  children  or  animals." 

"  But  are  they  not  already  Christians  ?  "  I  interrupted. 

"And  good  Christians,"  replied  Miss  Ruth.  "You  should 
hear  them  sing  their  hymns  in  which  they  speak  of  Paul  and 
Moses  as  of  people  whom  they  had  once  known.  Sometimes 
these  hymns  are  most  exquisite  poetry.  Do  you  remember, 
father,  that  about  the  bones,  with  the  air  that  so  well  fitted  the 
beautiful  words  ?  Suppose  you  sing  it  for  Mr. ." 

"  I  will  try,"  said  the  Colonel.  He  seated  himself  at  the 
piano  quite  simply.  When  had  he  found  leisure  to  learn  music 
enough  to  play  and  sing  so  pleasantly  ?  He  began  with  a  little 
prelude,  seeking  the  notes  with  the  supple  fingers  that  had 
held  the  officer's  sword,  the  doctor's  lancet,  the  administrator's 
pen,  and  that  I  had  seen  only  half  an  hour  before  plunging  a 
pair  of  forceps  into  the  mouth  of  a  rattlesnake.  He  played  a 
soft  and  gentle  air,  one  of  those  subdued  melodies  that  suggest 
the  echo  of  a  monotonous  measure  beaten  upon  a  stretched 
skin  during  the  warm  nights,  and  the  words  were  something 
like  this  :  "  I  know  that  these  bones  are  mine,  that  they  are 
mine,  and  that  they  will  be  raised  again  upon  that  morning." 

What  a  touching  phrase  and  how  singularly  significant,  when 
one  considers  that  it  was  invented  and  sung  by  slaves,  by  poor 
slaves,  who,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  owned  only  the  skeleton,  which 
it  was  impossible  to  tear  from  their  body  to  sell !  What 
wretchedness  and  what  hope  ! 

"  They  used  to  crack  their  heels  and  their  knees  together  in 
the  evenings  when  they  sang  those  words  around  our  house," 
went  on  Miss  Scott.  "  If  you  like  the  songs,  we  will  find  you 
some  more  of  them." 

"  There  is  one  song  that  I  have  never  heard,"  I  replied, 
"  and  that  I  am  sure  you  know,  Colonel ;  one  which,  I  am  sure, 


DOWN  SOUTH  383 

the  negroes  must  have  sung,  since  it  was  the  hymn  of  their 
deliverance  —  I  mean  John  Brown's  march." 

It  was  not  unintentionally  that  I  asked  my  host,  seeing  that 
he  was  so  complaisant,  to  sing  this  admirable  war  song,  which 
has  always  appeared  to  me  to  be  so  impressive  in  its  vigorous 
simplicity  :  — 

John  Brown's  body  lies  mouldering  in  the  tomb, 
But  his  soul  is  marching  on ! 

Glory,  glory,  hallelujah ! 

I  meant  this  Marseillaise  of  the  Northern  army  to  serve 
simply  as  pretext  for  the  telling  of  battle  stories,  such  as  old 
heroes  love  to  recite.  I  had  mistaken  the  amazing  simplicity 
of  this  hero.  He  appeared  a  little  surprised  at  my  request, 
but  turning  again  to  the  piano  he  sang  the  Warrior's  Hymn. 
It  is  a  clear-cut,  bright,  almost  gay  melody,  expressing  superb, 
almost  jovial  self-confidence  and  the  courage  that  comes  from 
serving  a  just  cause.  I  gazed  at  the  singer  while  he  uttered  the 
words  associated  for  him  with  many  a  bloody  memory.  But 
he  sang  the  air  just  as  it  was  written,  with  a  countenance  which 
showed  that  he  liked  to  sing  it.  My  mind  was,  neverthe 
less,  somewhat  confused  at  his  offer  immediately  afterward  to 
sing  the  Southern  march,  "  Dixie."  A  genuine  dance  air  is 
this  one,  bright,  agile,  and  frivolous.  The  Colonel  evidently 
took  great  pleasure  in  recalling  both  marches,  so  much  was  the 
civil  war  a  thing  of  another  age  to  him ;  one  might  say  merely  a 
picturesque  memory  of  the  past. 

Leaving  the  piano  and  swinging  his  great  form  in  a  rocking- 
chair,  he  said  :  — 

"  You  ought  to  have  heard  those  two  songs  sung  by  thou 
sands  of  soldiers  on  march  !  They  were  brave  men,  on  both 
sides,  and  perfect  soldiers  at  the  end.  I  saw  the  armies  made, 
built  up,  day  by  day,  hour  by  hour,  like  a  new  town.  I  re 
member,  toward  the  end,  that  a  French  officer  who  had  wit- 


384  OUTRE-MER 

nessed  one  of  our  parades,  asked :  '  Now  that  you  have  this 
fine  army,  where  are  you  going  to  begin?  In  Canada,  or  in 
Mexico?'" 

" '  We  shall  begin  by  sending  them  all  back  to  their  work,'  I 
replied  to  him ;  and  that  was  the  truth.  At  the  end  of  the 
war  we  had  twelve  hundred  thousand  men ;  six  months  after 
ward,  only  fifty  thousand,"  and  he  laughed  aloud  in  the  strength 
of  his  national  pride.  He  was  prouder  of  this  disbanding  than 
of  twenty  victories. 

"  But,"  he  said  seriously,  returning  to  his  old  point  of  view 
like  a  true  American,  "  all  the  same,  we  have  not  done  enough 
for  the  negroes.  We  ought  not  to  have  given  them  what  we 
have  given  them,  nor  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  have  left  them  to 
themselves  so  completely." 

"Do  you  think  that  one  can  improve  a  race?"  I  broke  in. 
"  While  I  was  in  Canada,  of  which  you  were  just  speaking,  near 
Montreal,  I  visited  a  village  of  converted  Iroquois.  Their 
priest  assured  me  that  it  was  impossible  to  instruct  them  beyond 
a  certain  point.  There  is,  as  it  were,  a  limit  of  culture  pre 
scribed  in  advance  in  the  blood  of  all  of  us." 

"Well,  one  can  attain  that  limit  at  least,"  said  Miss  Ruth, 
quickly.  "You  may  change  your  idea  perhaps,  when  you  have 
seen  the  school  that  we  have  founded  at  Philippeville.  I  will 
show  it  to  you  one  of  these  afternoons  if  you  remain  here  a  few 
days." 

When  I  left  the  Colonel  we  had  made  an  appointment  for 
this  very  visit.  I  was  to  take  lunch  with  him,  and  we  were  to 
go  to  the  school  in  company  with  his  daughter,  an  ingenious 
invention  perfected  by  him  permitting  her  to  be  removed  from 
her  couch  to  a  carriage.  He  told  me  his  plans  for  the  after 
noon,  as  he  conducted  me,  through  his  park,  toward  my  car 
riage.  We  took  a  different  road  from  that  by  which  I  had 
arrived,  and,  as  we  passed  before  a  little  enclosure  full  of  trees 
and  surrounded  by  low  walls,  he  said  ;  — 


DOWN   SOUTH  385 

"That  is  the  cemetery  where  all  the  Chastins  have  been  buried 
for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Would  you  like  to  see  their 
tombs  ?  Places  like  these  are  the  remains  of  that  old  America 
which  travellers  forget  so  often  in  their  studies  of  the  new." 

We  entered  the  cemetery.  The  luxuriant  Southern  vegeta 
tion  transformed  these  thirty  square  yards  into  a  great  mass 
of  flowers.  Wild  jasmine,  hawthorn,  honeysuckle,  narcissus, 
grew  there  in  glorious  confusion.  Glycins  climbed  up  the 
trees,  and  yellow  roses,  those  miniature  roses  that  are  called 
bankshires,  grew  in  large  tufts  among  the  dark  cypresses.  The 
gravestones  were  worn  away  by  time  in  this  garden  of  youth,  of 
springtime,  and  of  perfume. 

I  parted  the  fresh  branches  and  sweet  flowers  to  decipher 
some  of  the  epitaphs.  The  latest  of  the  stones,  put  there  no 
doubt  by  the  care  of  Mr.  Scott,  was  decorated  with  a  carved 
sabre.  I  read  the  inscription  on  it,  and  saw  that  it  was  the 
tomb  of  the  last  of  the  Chastins,  and  that  this  last  heir  of  the 
name  was  also  a  colonel,  but  in  the  Confederate  army.  Near 
by,  upon  another  tomb,  nearly  hidden  by  vegetation,  I  could 
distinguish  the  date  1738,  and  the  words  "New  Orleans."  I  at 
once  understood  that  the  successor  of  the  former  owners  had 
had  the  pious  idea  of  placing  in  their  last  repose,  side  by  side, 
the  founder  of  the  demesne  and  his  descendant. 

It  was  a  pathetic  thought  what  humanity  lay  in  this  enclosure. 
The  race  which  here  slept  in  its  entirety  had  once  been  all 
powerful,  and  no  one  now  remained  to  pay  it  homage  except 
the  generous  enemy  who  had  come  into  its  inheritance,  and 
the  changing  seasons  that  showered  their  splendors  on  the  sad 
resting-place  with  that  calm  indifference  of  nature  so  hateful 
to  us  when  we  are  young,  and  that  we  love  when  age  begins 
to  creep  on.  The  consciousness  of  our  littleness  enables  us  to 
meet  the  inevitable  defeat  with  a  tranquil  soul.  Although  as 
an  active  man,  and  one  who  has  been  through  the  war,  the 
Colonel,  perhaps,  did  not  feel  the  same  sort  of  emotion  as  I 
cc 


386  OUTRE-MER 

myself,  this  little  mortuary  oasis,  which  the  murmur  of  bees 
filled  with  music  on  that  sunny  day,  did  not  leave  him  indifferent. 
He  became  as  silent  as  myself,  and  it  was  only  when  we  had 
left  the  place  that  he  recovered  his  spirit,  and  said  :  — 

"You  noticed  that  the  cemetery  is  still  cared  for?  One  of 
their  old  slaves  has  undertaken  the  duty.  They  call  her  Aunt 
Sarah.  You  will  see  her  at  our  school.  She  looks  after  the 
children.  Her  fidelity  is  a  tribute  to  the  Chastins,  and  it 
makes  the  place  dearer  to  me.  Naturally  there  is  some  pleas 
ure  in  the  thought  that  one  occupies  a  house  in  which  have 
lived  none  but  noble  people  for  four  or  five  generations.  It 
makes  one  feel  as  though  there  were  no  unfortunates  around. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  none.  When  you  have  been  to 
the  school,  you  shall  visit  a  few  of  the  cabins.  You  will  see 
the  happy  faces  of  these  people.  A  little  salt  pork  and  some 
fruit,  and  they  are  as  comfortable  as  though  they  had  all  the 
millions  of  all  the  cottagers  of  Newport.  However,  here  is 
your  carriage." 

My  little  carriage,  in  fact,  awaited  me  almost  at  the  door 
of  the  cemetery.  I  recognized  in  this  delicate,  hospitable 
attention  the  graceful  foresight  of  the  invalid.  The  Colonel 
gave  a  few  instructions  to  the  coachman,  and  said  to  me. 
"On  Tuesday,  at  one  o'clock,"  as  he  shook  my  hand.  I  had 
to  repress  the  temptation  to  reply  to  him,  "Tuesday?  What 
a  long  time !  "  so  great  was  my  desire  to  see  him  soon  again. 
The  originality  of  his  character,  the  nobility  of  his  daughter's 
face,  the  picturesque  aspect  of  their  residence,  had  inspired 
in  me  one  of  those  sudden  interests  that  professional  novel 
ists  are  probably  the  only  ones  to  feel.  The  imagination  is 
as  if  entranced  with  a  passionate  desire  to  know  all  about 
some  one,  to  breathe  the  same  air,  to  live  the  same  life,  to 
think  the  same  thoughts.  While  I  was  travelling  along  the 
sandy  roads  toward  Philippeville  I  hardly  noticed  the  beauty 
of  the  scenery,  so  absorbed  was  I  by  my  reflections  upon  these 


DOWN   SOUTH  387 

two  persons,  who  were  unknown  to  me  a  few  hours  before.  I 
admired  the  puritanical  ardor  which  had  distinguished  their 
ancestors,  and  which  still  burned  in  them  like  an  inextin 
guishable  flame.  I  found  in  their  fervor  of  proselytism  the 
influence  of  the  pilgrims  of  the  Mayflower. 

I  was  surprised  at  the  race  prejudices  which,  notwithstand 
ing  this  missionary  zeal,  made  them  regard  as  pollution  the 
marriage  of  one  of  their  race  with  the  best  of  their  black  pro 
tege"  es.  I  thought  of  the  wealth  of  this  man's  nature,  a  nature 
which  five  or  six  trades,  and  sixty  years  of  work,  had  not 
exhausted;  of  the  sadness  of  his  daughter's  life;  of  the  pecul 
iarities  of  this  country,  even;  of  the  astonishing  apparition, 
for  example,  of  Mr.  Scott  busily  engaged  in  wrenching  out 
the  fangs  of  a  chloroformed  serpent.  In  fact,  fifty  motives 
made  me  desirous  of  seeing  again  as  soon  as  possible  the  man 
whom  I  had  met  to-day.  I  little  thought  under  what  different 
circumstances  I  should  see  him  on  Tuesday,  very  far  from 
the  family  lunch  presided  over  by  Miss  Ruth,  nor  that  I 
should  take  part  in  his  company  in  a  stranger  battue  than  even 
a  rattlesnake  hunt  would  have  been  for  a  Parisian  writer. 

It  was  on  a  Friday  that  I  paid  my  visit  to  the  Colonel.  Dur 
ing  the  following  three  days,  there  fell  in  Philippeville  one  of 
those  rains  which  in  hot  countries  seem  to  fill  the  atmosphere 
with  muggy  vapors,  rather  than  to  refresh  it.  Imprisoned  in 
the  hotel,  I  had  no  other  distraction  than  to  watch  the  water 
falling  in  inexhaustible  cataracts  and  to  talk  with  the  hotel- 
keeper.  I  had  been  mischievous  enough  to  tell  him  of  my 
visit  to  the  Colonel  and  of  my  encounter  with  one  of  those 
formidable  reptiles  of  which,  I  believe,  he  would  have  obsti 
nately  denied  the  existence,  even  if  he  had  seen  one  lift  its 
head  in  the  middle  of  his  tennis  court. 

"Oh,  those  niggers  must  have  gone  into  Florida  for  it," 
replied  Mr.  Williams,  without  hesitation.  "They  have  a  per 
fect  mania  for  catching  them  alive,  in  order  to  sell  them  to 


388  OUTRE-MER 

some  zoological  garden."  He  said  a  "zoo,"  byway  of  abbrevi 
ation.  "  Mr.  Scott,  who  is  a  fine  fellow,  ought  not  to  render 
them  such  services.  He  only  encourages  them,  without  taking 
into  account  that  the  serpents  might  awake  during  the  opera 
tion.  But  the  Colonel  has  always  been  too  good  to  the  col 
ored  people.  He  has  been  ill  requited  several  times  for  his 
kindness.  Did  he  tell  you  that  at  this  moment  a  certain 
Henry  Seymour,  one  of  his  old  servants,  whom  he  had  dis 
missed  for  robbery,  is  in  Philippeville  prison,  after  having 
ravaged  the  entire  country?  He  took  refuge  in  the  woods, 
after  a  murder,  and  stayed  there  with  his  Winchester. 

"  He  was  such  a  good  shot  that  he  terrified  all  the  other 
negroes,  and  the  cowards  furnished  him  with  food,  brandy, 
and  cartridges.  Finally  he  was  taken.  A  false  friend  mixed 
some  opium  in  his  whiskey  and  delivered  him  up.  He  was 
tried  and  condemned  to  death.  Would  you  believe  it,  Mr. 
Scott  was  indignant  at  the  idea  that  the  man  had  been  cap 
tured  by  such  means,  and  managed  to  obtain  a  postponement 
of  the  execution.  He  even  went  to  Atlanta  to  obtain  a  re 
prieve.  He  was  not  successful,  and  on  Thursday  this  rascal 
will  be  hanged." 

"  But  the  Colonel  must  have  had  other  reasons,  apart  from 
this  treachery?  " 

"Oh,  of  course;  he  insisted  that  Seymour  had  been  put  on 
the  chain  gang  while  too  young.  You  have  seen  those  men, 
in  white  and  brown  suits,  who  work  on  our  roads,  with  chains 
at  their  feet.  Those  are  our  convicts.  And  this  youth  has 
gone  through  that  experience.  I  remember  him  well.  It  is 
true  he  was  only  seventeen  years  of  age,  but  he  had  already 
committed  two  robberies,  without  counting  that  for  which 
Mr.  Scott  discharged  him,  although  he  would  not  have  him 
arrested." 

*'Only  seventeen  years!"  I  replied.  "It's  very  young,  all 
the  same.  At  that  age  one  is  very  impressionable,  and  such 


DOWN  SOUTH  389 

company  is  not  calculated  to  improve  a  character  that  has 
gone  wrong." 

"Well,"  answered  Mr.  Williams,  "there  are  many  who 
remain  in  the  chain  gang  for  a  year,  or  two  years,  and  even 
then  begin  their  life  afresh.  When  a  man  has  paid  his  debt, 
we  Americans  regard  it  as  really  paid.  This  Seymour  could 
have  paid  his  in  work.  If  he  preferred  to  carry  on  in  a  way 
that  he  would  have  to  pay  for  by  hanging,  why,  all  right! 
By  the  way,  would  it  not  interest  you  to  be  present  at  the 
execution?  In  Georgia  we  have  not  adopted  electricity.  We 
just  stick  to  hanging.  You  can  compare  it  with  France;  for 
there  you  have  the  guillotine,  have  you  not?" 

"I  have  never  seen  it  work,"  I  replied,  "and  I  doubt 
whether  I  have  sufficient  moral  courage  to  stand  by  and  see  a 
man  hanged." 

"In  any  case,  I  will  get  you  a  ticket  from  the  sheriff,"  said 
the  hotel-keeper,  "and  you  can  use  it  or  not,  just  as  you 
choose." 

He  kept  his  word,  and  two  days  later  —  that  is,  on  Monday 
—  he  announced  to  me  that  I  should  have  the  ticket.  But  on 
the  evening  of  the  same  day  he  approached  me  again,  in  the 
hall  of  the  hotel,  wearing  the  anxious  countenance  of  a  good 
citizen  who  has  learned  bad  news,  and  of  a  hotel-keeper  who 
foresees  some  unpleasant  occurrences  for  his  guests,  and  said: 

"What  do  you  think?  Have  you  heard  the  news?  The 
ticket  that  the  sheriff  has  given  us  is  no  good.  That  damned 
rascal,  Seymour,  is  not  going  to  be  executed." 

"Has  Mr.  Scott  obtained  his  reprieve?  "  I  asked. 

"No;  the  man  has  escaped.  They  gave  him  too  much 
freedom  in  his  cell.  He  received  too  many  visits.  Some  one 
passed  him  a  knife,  and  this  afternoon,  when  the  jailer  took 
him  his  food,  he  took  advantage  of  the  moment  when  the  man 
stooped  to  put  the  tray  on  the  floor  and  planted  the  knife 
right  between  his  shoulders.  The  jailer  fell  dead  at  once. 


390  OUTRE-MER 

Seymour  took  his  revolver  and  his  keys,  freed  seven  negroes 
or  mulattoes,  prisoners  like  himself,  but  for  slight  offences, 
and  the  eight  scoundrels  escaped  by  the  back  door  of  the 
prison,  which  faces  the  country.  They  had  the  good  luck  to 
get  away  without  being  seen,  so  that  their  flight  was  only 
known  two  hours  later.  By  this  time  they  are  in  the  woods, 
and  there  can  be  no  traces  of  them  on  the  roads  after  the  heavy 
rains.  Heaven  knows  when  they  will  be  retaken !  Now  was 
I  not  right  in  saying  that  the  Colonel  is  too  easy  with  those 
people?  If  he  had  not^demanded  a  postponement,  Seymour 
would  have  been  hanged  last  week,  the  jailer  would  still  be 
living,  and  I  should  not  be  afraid  of  losing  my  guests.  A 
family  is  to  come  next  week,  but  if  they  read  in  the  papers 
about  this  adventure,  they  will  be  afraid  and  go  to  St.  Augus 
tine.  They  will  get  the  idea  that  it  is  not  safe  in  Georgia." 

I  was  sufficiently  accustomed  to  the  newspapers  so  dreaded 
by  Mr.  Williams,  and  to  their  extraordinary  accounts  of  daily 
happenings,  to  feel  some  astonishment  at  the  change  of  plans 
of  which  he  spoke.  Apart  from  the  larger  cities,  America 
still  continues  to  be  a  country  of  daring  exploits,  executed 
with  an  audacity  that  recoils  before  no  danger.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  had  not  expected  to  find  myself,  I,  a  peaceable  Gallo- 
Roman  literary  man,  taking  part  in  such  a  tragic  history  as 
this  of  the  jail-breaking  bandit.  I  passed  the  evening  follow 
ing  Mr.  Williams's  revelations  in  wondering  how  I  could  bring 
the  Colonel  to  speak  to  me  of  his  old  servant  during  our  lunch 
eon,  on  the  following  day.  I  had  divined  from  a  few  words 
the  hotel-keeper  had  let  drop,  that  the  philanthropic  owner  of 
Scott's  place  was  very  sensitive  on  this  particular  point.  As 
things  turned  out,  the  Colonel  spared  me  the  trouble;  for  on 
the  Tuesday  morning,  about  nine  o'clock,  his  card  was  brought 
up,  with  the  message  that  he  was  downstairs  and  wished  to 
speak  to  me.  I  found  him  wearing  his  hunting-costume,  as 
on  the  first  occasion  that  I  had  seen  him,  his  legs  thrust  into 


DOWN    SOUTH  391 

stout  leather  gaiters,  and  with  enormously  thick-soled  shoes. 
He  carried  a  rifle  in  his  hand. 

"  I  came  to  beg  you  to  excuse  me,"  he  said,  without  any 
preamble,  "  and  to  ask  you  to  put  off  our  luncheon  to  another 
day.  I  daresay  you  are  aware  that  several  prisoners  have 
escaped  from  jail,  and  among  them  one  who  was  condemned 
to  death  —  in  fact,  a  man  who  was  formerly  one  of  my 
servants." 

"I  have  heard  of  it,"  I  replied,  "and  also  that  you  had  for 
merly  been  very  good  to  the  wretched  creature." 

"That  is  not  true,"  he  responded ;  "but  in  any  case  it  is  of 
no  account.  The  important  thing  just  at  present  is  to  re 
capture  them,  in  order  that  they  may  not  terrorize  the  country. 
Immediately  on  their  escape,  we  telegraphed  to  Atlanta  for 
bloodhounds,  dogs  specially  trained  for  man  hunting.  I  have 
collected  about  ten  of  the  citizens  for  the  work,  and  I  have 
brought  you  a  horse,  so  that  if  you  choose  to  come  with  us —  " 

"  Why  not?  "  I  replied,  after  a  few  minutes'  hesitation.  "At 
least,  so  long  as  there  is  no  —  " 

"You  are  afraid  of  some  lynching  scene?"  interrupted  the 
Colonel,  who  had  read  the  fear  in  my  eyes.  "  Make  yourself 
easy  on  that  point,  for  while  I  am  present  they  would  not  dare. 
Have  you  your  gun?  "  and,  upon  receiving  a  negative  response, 
he  added :  "  However,  you  will  not  need  it.  You  don't 
belong  to  the  country,  and  you  will  naturally  only  be  with 
us  as  a  spectator.  Besides,  only  one  of  them  is  armed,  this 
very  Seymour,  and  he  has  only  a  No.  48  Colt.  If  he  had  his 
Winchester,  I  shouldn't  take  you  along ;  for  he  would  never 
allow  himself  to  be  taken  without  bringing  down  five  or  six 
of  us." 

Twenty  minutes  later,  and  without  any  further  preparation, 
I  was  following  the  Colonel  along  one  of  the  roads  which 
traverse  the  immense  forests  of  pitch-pines  planted  around 
Philippeville.  My  horse,  a  Kentucky  animal,  was  trained  to 


392  OUTRE-MER 

go  at  that  gallop  the  Americans  call  "  single  foot,"  a  kind  of 
swift  trot  that  covers  the  ground  very  rapidly,  and  which  I  have 
never  met  anywhere  else.  As  I  learned  afterward,  our  little 
party  was  composed  of  simple  shopkeepers.  Except  for  their 
gaiters,  they  were  dressed  just  as  though  at  their  counters,  but 
they  all  wore  a  singularly  energetic  expression,  and  displayed  a 
not  less  singular  skill  in  managing  their  steeds. 

It  was  very  evident  that  they  had  all  at  some  time  been 
occupied  in  some  business  which  had  not  been  without  its  cares 
and  worries,  before  establishing  themselves  in  this  remote  corner 
of  Georgia,  as  grocer  or  as  saddler,  as  dealer  in  ready-made 
clothing  or  as  undertaker.  With  the  exception  of  the  Colonel 
and  myself,  the  whole  caravan  was  chewing  tobacco.  I  could 
see  the  regular  motion  of  the  jaws,  and  the  barrels  of  the  rifles 
—  each  of  them  carried  one  —  gleaming  close  to  the  faces, 
stirred  with  this  automatic  movement.  Eight  dogs,  rather 
small  in  height,  and  undistinguishable  to  a  novice  from  the 
ordinary  hunting  dog,  went  on  ahead  of  us,  around  us,  to  right, 
to  left,  sniffing  the  air,  hesitating,  running,  taking  up  the  scent, 
and  losing  it  again. 

The  storm  had  ceased  on  the  preceding  evening,  and  the 
morning,  after  many  days  of  torrent-like  rain,  was  made  lovely 
by  a  moist,  bright  radiance.  Although  the  forest  roads  passed 
through  a  sandy  country  which  had  already  swallowed  up  almost 
all  the  rain,  so  much  had  fallen  that  the  low-lying  portions  were 
still  full.  The  tiniest  of  the  watercourses  which  descended 
toward  the  neighboring  river  had  overflowed,  and  we  had  almost 
constantly  to  clear  some  brook  transformed  into  a  pond,  in 
which  our  horses  waded  up  to  the  chest. 

Almost  continually,  also,  we  had  to  leap  over  trunks  which 
strewed  the  road.  In  the  great  forests  of  Georgia  and  Florida, 
the  negroes  are  accustomed  to  draw  the  resin  from  the  pitch- 
pines  by  notching  them.  The  notch  they  cut  is  so  deep  that 
a  wind  storm  of  very  slight  force  is  quite  sufficient  to  break 


DOWN   SOUTH  393 

the  tree,  and  a  veritable  tempest  had  been  raging  all  through 
the  region  during  the  last  two  days. 

"The  negroes  call  these  fallen  trees  'hurricanes,'  "  said  the 
Colonel,  in  explanation  of  this  newly  felled  mass,  an  explana 
tion  which,  however,  did  not  account  for  the  old  trunks,  the 
innumerable  rotting  stumps,  between  which  grew  a  rich,  thick 
vegetation  of  tiny  palms,  showing  themselves  bravely  or  lying 
crushed  to  the  earth.  Out  of  this  carpet  of  large  flat  leaves 
sprang  great  honeysuckles  and  flowers  such  as  I  had  admired 
the  other  afternoon,  a  luxuriant  mixture  of  pink  and  white, 
freshest  pink  and  most  delicate  white.  Colossal  yellow  jessa 
mines  were  interlaced  in  the  trees.  Violets  as  large  as  pansies 
peeped  out  among  the  grass.  The  barking  of  the  dogs,  who 
were  now  following  the  trail,  began  to  fill  the  spring  landscape 
with  a  clamor  that  seemed  to  me  exceedingly  fantastic. 

Not  being  charged  with  the  civic  duties  whose  trace  I  could 
see  printed  upon  the  faces  of  the  horsemen,  who  were  now 
walking  their  steeds,  their  bridles  twisted  round  their  wrists, 
their  eyes  wide  open,  and  their  rifles  in  their  hands,  I  had 
time  to  dream,  and  I  was  oppressed  with  the  thought  that  the 
vehement  bark  of  those  ferocious  animals  was  being  heard 
with  terror  by  seven  or  eight  unfortunates  crouched  motion 
less  in  the  woods,  or,  perhaps,  crushing,  in  their  furious  course, 
flowers  similar  to  those  which  surrounded  me;  casting  the 
branches  to  one  side  with  frenzied  arms;  breathless  with  fear 
and  panting  with  fatigue.  At  this  moment  the  pack,  which 
had  again  been  at  fault,  took  off  along  a  cross  road  with  such 
fury  that  they  were  soon  lost  to  our  view.  The  Colonel  halted 
us.  He  listened  for  a  few  moments  with  the  close  attention 
of  an  old  warrior  accustomed  to  interpret  distant  sounds. 
"The  dogs  have  stopped,"  he  said  at  last.  "They  have  got 
one  of  them.  We  had  better  spread  ourselves  out  fan-like  in 
order  to  surround  them  and  the  man." 

Acting  upon  his  instructions,  the  little  troop  disappeared  in 


394  OUTRE-MER 

a  few  seconds  among  the  trees.  I  saw  the  horsemen,  one  after 
another,  dive  deeper  into  the  gloom,  the  bridles  hanging  free 
now,  and  the  rifles  ready  for  use.  The  shrewd,  intelligent 
horses  appeared  to  go  in  the  right  direction  by  sheer  instinct. 
The  horsemen  had  merely  to  press  with  one  of  the  large, 
wooden  stirrups,  decorated  with  leather,  in  which  the  foot  was 
fixed  in  the  Mexican  manner,  and  the  knowing  animal  turned, 
passing  with  sure  and  firm  tread,  through  the  pools  of  water  and 
crossing  the  obstacles  formed  by  large,  fallen  trees,  which  lay 
on  every  hand,  without  even  brushing  them  with  the  hoof.  The 
Colonel  and  I  remained  alone.  We  began  to  advance  in  the 
direction  whence  came  the  barking,  but  we  had  not  ridden 
in  this  way  more  than  two  hundred  yards  before  we  had  to 
slacken  our  pace.  The  river,  one  of  these  little  watercourses, 
almost  without  name,  of  which  hundreds  flow  in  that  region, 
and  which  are  about  as  large  as  the  Adige  or  the  Po,  had  over 
flowed  its  banks.  Its  muddy  waters  flooded  the  portion  of  the 
forest  where  we  were  now  marching.  The  Colonel  went  on  in 
front  of  me.  "  I  know  the  route  a  little,"  he  said,  "  and  there's 
less  chance  that  my  horse  will  break  its  leg  in  some  hole." 

I  could  see  him  about  a  neck  in  advance  of  me,  his  body 
so  supple,  notwithstanding  his  age,  upon  his  stout  steed.  Now 
and  again  he  would  turn  and  stoop  as  though  to  gather  up 
into  one  ear  the  full  significance  of  the  disturbance  coming 
from  the  place  toward  which  we  were  riding.  I  could  see  his 
profile  at  such  times,  a  resolute,  serious  profile,  but  wearing 
an  expression  of  sadness  that  I  was  beginning  to  read  both  by 
the  light  of  the  hotel-keeper's  indiscretions,  and  by  that  given 
me  by  his  own  character.  At  that  very  moment,  engaged  in 
doing  his  duty  as  a  good  citizen  in  hunting  down  a  brigand, 
he  could  see  again,  without  doubt,  that  same  brigand  just  as 
he  was  when  in  his  service,  a  mere  boy,  almost  a  child.  The 
contrast  was  too  great  between  the  day  that  he  had  discharged 
Seymour  from  his  house,  after  a  first  escapade,  and  the  pres- 


DOWN   SOUTH  395 

ent  time,  when  he  was  conducting  a  troop  charged  with  the 
duty  of  tracking  his  old  servant,  now  an  outrageous  malefactor, 
through  these  inundated  woods.  With  the  idea  of  responsi 
bility  proper  to  the  old  Puritan,  it  was  impossible  that  the 
Colonel  should  not  contrast  these  two  episodes,  impossible 
that  he  should  not  say  to  himself,  "  I  might,  perhaps,  have 
averted  this  destiny  if  I  had  been  less  severe." 

I  could  read  the  cares  of  a  troubled  conscience  upon  that 
strong  countenance,  side  by  side  with  the  natural  tension  of 
the  soldier  lying  in  ambush.  All  at  once  the  complex  expres 
sion  of  the  martial  visage  became  more  intense.  The  Colonel 
again  stopped  his  horse,  his  hands  again  gripped  his  rifle, 
which  he  brought  to  his  shoulder  with  terrible  deliberation. 
I  stooped  almost  to  the  neck  of  my  animal,  and  through  the 
foliage  of  the  pitch-pines  I  could  see  the  shore  of  the  river, 
recognizable  in  this  enormous  flood  only  by  the  abrupt  cessa 
tion  of  vegetation.  I  could  see  the  dogs  swimming  upon  the 
sheet  of  reddish  water.  I  could  see  their  three  wide-open 
jaws  collected  threateningly  round  the  head  of  a  man.  With 
one  arm  the  unfortunate  creature  was  swimming,  with  the 
other  he  held  a  pistol  out  of  the  water.  Slowly,  almost  im 
perceptibly,  he  advanced,  fighting  against  the  current  and 
trying  to  reach  a  submerged  bridge,  of  which  the  iron  cable 
was  still  visible  five  or  six  yards  away.  It  was  the  only  chance 
that  he  had  of  crossing  that  terrible  river.  You  could  measure 
the  force  of  its  current  by  three  logs  that  went  drifting  by. 
It  was  a  miracle  that  the  swimmer  had  not  been  struck  by  one 
of  them;  a  miracle  that  he  had  gained  even  that  little  dis 
tance.  He  must  have  been  fighting  in  this  way  a  long  time, 
and  yet  he  did  not  lose  courage  !  When  the  pack  surrounded 
him  too  closely,  terribly  united  and  howling,  but  without 
biting  him,  he  would  strike  at  the  muzzles  of  the  dogs  with 
the  butt  end  of  his  revolver.  The  furious  blow  would  drive 
back  the  living  barrier  of  implacable  jaws  and  would  thus 


396  OUTRE-MER 

leave  him  sufficient  room  to  enable  him  to  make  a  little  more 
headway.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  he  was  keeping  his  weapon 
intact  for  a  more  important  occasion,  if  he  was  compelled  to 
abandon  his  one  hope  of  safety. 

There  was  in  this  desperate  combat  against  such  opposing 
forces,  against  the  elements,  against  animals,  against  men, 
something  so  courageous  and  so  hopeless  that  it  oppressed  the 
heart.  We  were  so  close  to  the  man  that  I  could  see  with 
extreme  clearness  the  expression  of  his  face.  It  was  a  mu 
latto's  face,  rather  yellow  than  brown,  a  nearer  neighbor  of 
white  blood  than  the  negro's.  His  hair  was  not  kinky,  it 
was  even  hardly  curly.  The  nose,  instead  of  being  flat,  was 
aquiline.  What  family  had  bequeathed  this  aristocratic  face 
to  this  robber,  this  murderer?  From  whom  had  this  Henry 
Seymour  descended?  For  it  was  Seymour.  If  any  doubt  had 
remained  in  my  mind  after  the  description  the  hotel-keeper 
had  given  me,  the  Colonel's  agitation  would  have  dissipated 
it.  His  rifle  continued  to  remain  at  his  shoulder,  but  his 
finger  did  not  press  the  trigger.  Even  had  it  touched  it,  it  is 
not  probable  that  the  ball  would  have  struck  the  mark;  so  great 
was  the  trembling  of  the  old  man's  arm,  now  that  he  was  aim 
ing  at  his  old  servant.  Finally  the  rifle  barrel  was  raised 
without  having  been  fired,  and  I  heard  Mr.  Scott  say  aloud, 
as  if  he  had  been  alone :  — 

"  No,  I  cannot  shoot  him  so !  " 

He  spurred  his  horse.  The  water  was  so  deep  now  that 
the  Colonel  was  in  it  to  above  the  knee.  He  could  go  no 
further  without  swimming,  but  he  was  upon  the  edge  of  the 
forest  and  there  were  no  trees  before  him.  He  cried  out,  and 
the  swimmer  turned.  I  saw  the  revolver  that  the  fugitive  con 
tinued  to  hold  out  of  the  water  aimed  at  the  Colonel,  and  then 
begin  to  rise  just  as  the  Colonel's  rifle  had  done.  Seymour 
had  recognized  Mr.  Scott,  and  he  did  not  fire.  This  hesitation 
to  commit  murder  was  so  completely  unexpected  in  a  profes- 


DOWN   SOUTH  397 

sional  murderer,  and  under  such  circumstances,  that  even  at 
that  moment  and  in  the  fever  caused  by  such  an  adventure  I 
could  not  help  feeling  astonishment.  The  man  must  have  felt 
for  his  master  a  very  strange  sentiment  of  veneration  to  refuse 
to  fire,  he  a  man  who  had  already  spilled  so  much  blood.  Or 
could  it  be  that  he  had  seen  the  Colonel's  gesture  of  a  few 
minutes  ago,  and,  being  certain  that  he  would  not  fire, 
thought  it  was  useless  to  waste  one  of  his  five  shots?  Or, 
again,  could  it  be  that  this  excellent  marksman  recognized 
the  impossibility  of  aiming  accurately  while  swimming  as  he 
was?  I  shall  never  know  the  secret  motive  that  prompted 
this  scene,  which  passed  with  such  tragic  rapidity. 

Standing  up  in  his  stirrups,  thus  making  a  still  more  promi 
nent  target  of  his  huge  frame,  the  Colonel  cried,  with  a  voice 
that  dominated  the  furious  barkings  of  the  dogs,  the  tumult  of 
the  water,  arid  the  rustling  of  the  forest:  — 

"Come,  Henry,  my  boy,  you  see  it's  no  use!  You'll  have 
to  give  up.  There  are  seven  other  rifles  after  you,  and  they'll 
be  here  in  five  minutes." 

The  man  shook  his  head  without  replying.  Then,  as  though 
the  presence  of  his  enemies  had  given  him  new  strength,  he 
fired  at  one  of  the  dogs  with  the  muzzle  close  to  the  animal. 
It  howled  with  pain,  and  the  other  dogs  hung  back.  Then, 
judging  that  his  weapon  could  not  serve  him  any  longer,  he 
dropped  it  into  the  water  in  order  to  dive  and  swim  with  both 
arms. 

"  He's  going  to  escape,"  said  the  Colonel,  whose  clear  eyes 
became  fixed. 

He  again  shouldered  his  rifle,  and  I  felt  that  this  time  he 
would  not  hesitate.  This  heroic  effort  of  citizenship  was,  how 
ever,  spared  him.  When  Seymour's  head  came  up  in  the  river, 
he  was  quite  close  to  the  bridge,  sufficiently  close,  in  fact,  to 
seize  the  cable.  In  another  moment  we  saw  him  dive  and 
reappear  on  the  other  side  of  it.  Perhaps  if  he  had  once  got 


398  OUTRE-MER 

upon  the  bridge  and  had  gone  on  diving  while  walking,  he 
might  have  escaped.  But  the  instinct  to  stretch  his  limbs 
after  such  an  effort  made  him  stand  erect  the  instant  he  felt 
his  feet  posed  upon  the  planks.  His  chest  appeared  above  the 
water,  and  that  very  moment  two  shots  went  off  at  our  right, 
fired  by  two  of  the  hunters.  One  of  the  balls  struck  the 
mulatto  in  the  shoulder,  and  we  saw  his  arm  drop  limp  and 
inert.  The  other  crashed  against  the  iron  cord  of  the  cable, 
glanced  off,  and  struck  the  fugitive  in  the  head.  He  raised  his 
unwounded  hand  to  his  forehead  and  then  reeled.  The  few 
movements  that  he  made  to  grasp  anew  the  iron  cable  were 
a  mere  convulsive,  instinctive  effort.  He  felt  himself  fainting, 
and  disappeared  under  the  water.  But  the  Colonel  had  already 
forced  his  horse  into  the  stream  and  had  begun  swimming. 
He  gained  the  side  of  the  wounded  man,  whom  he  raised  with 
his  powerful  arm  and  brought  to  shore. 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  later  the  entire  troop,  attracted  by  the 
shots,  had  assembled  with  us  around  the  still  fainting  man. 
The  dogs  slipped  between  the  legs  of  the  horses,  trying  to  smell 
and  lick  the  bloody  cloths  with  which  Mr.  Scott  was  wiping  the 
two  wounds,  which  were  but  slight,  received  by  the  unfortunate 
wretch.  We  learned  later  that,  in  the  hope  of  putting  off  his 
execution,  he  had  pretended  to  be  ill,  and  had  refused  to  eat  for 
several  days.  That  was  the  real  cause  of  his  defeat.  Had  he 
been  more  robust,  he  would  not  have  been  so  much  retarded. 
He  would  have  crossed  the  bridge,  as  his  comrades  had  done, 
two  hours  before  our  arrival,  and  once  in  the  other  part  of  the 
forest  he  would  have  found,  as  they  did,  a  line  of  railroad,  and 
like  them,  without  doubt,  would  have  clambered  on  to  a  train  in 
motion,  like  professional  tramps. 

Before  long  Henry  Seymour  began  to  recover  his  senses.  At 
the  first  effort  he  made  to  rise,  one  of  the  men  drew  his  revolver, 
while  two  others  seized  the  wounded  man  by  the  legs  and  tied 
them  firmly.  He,  however,  did  not  make  any  fresh  attempt 


DOWN   SOUTH  399 

at  useless  resistance.  The  ball  which  had  glanced  off  the  cable 
had  struck  him  in  the  arch  of  the  eyebrow,  and  had  cruelly 
wounded  all  the  left  side  of  the  forehead  and  the  eyelid  so  that 
only  the  right  eye  was  capable  of  being  opened.  But  the  furious 
glance  he  gave  with  this  single  eye  was  so  ferocious  as  his  gaze 
wandered  around  our  circle  that  one  of  the  huntsmen  replied  to 
his  silent  defiance  by  a  word  involuntarily  spoken  aloud  :  — 

"  It's  too  late,  man,"  he  said  simply. 

Seymour  did  not  appear  to  have  heard  him.  It  was  the 
Colonel  he  was  looking  at  now,  with  quite  another  expression. 
The  brown  eyes  had  taken  on  again  their  look  of  soft,  humid 
sweetness.  I  expected,  from  the  nature  of  his  look,  to  hear  some 
strangely  touching  expression,  but  I  had  misread  the  animal  sim 
plicity  of  such  a  nature.  All  that  the  wounded  man  felt  in  the 
way  of  sentiment  for  Mr.  Scott  resulted  solely  in  this  demand, 
which  he  addressed  to  him  directly,  as  though  he  would  not 
deign  to  speak  to  any  one  else  :  — 

"Give  me  something  to  drink,  Colonel;  I  am  so  thirsty. 
Won't  you  give  me  something  to  drink?" 

There  was  something  so  coaxing,  so  almost  infantine  in  the 
voice  with  which  he  spoke  to  his  old  master,  that  it  recalled 
the  petting  of  which  he  had  once  been  the  object.  Mr.  Scott 
drew  a  flask  from  his  pocket,  uncorked  it,  and  put  the  mouth 
to  the  lips  of  the  prisoner,  holding  up  his  head  as  he  did  so. 
Seymour  swallowed  several  mouthfuls  greedily.  His  eye  began 
to  glisten  more  caressingly,  and,  with  that  versatility  of  feeling 
which  equals  in  those  singular  beings  their  suppleness  of  move 
ment,  he  smiled  with  pleasure  as  if  he  had  quite  forgotten  his 
rage  of  only  a  few  minutes  ago,  his  crime  of  the  preceding 
evening,  his  wild  flight  of  this  morning,  his  wounds  and  the 
certainty  of  his  dark  future. 

"  Ah  !  It's  the  same  whiskey  that  we  used  to  drink  when 
hunting  together,"  he  said,  smacking  his  lips.  "He  beats 
everybody,  does  my  Colonel." 


400  OUTRE-MER 

"And  now,"  responded  the  latter,  "  you're  going  to  be  quiet 
and  let  me  dress  your  wounds." 

"Will  you  give  me  some  more  whiskey  afterward ?"  asked 
Seymour. 

"  Yes,  you  shall  have  some." 

"And  one  of  your  cigars,  Colonel?" 

"And  one  of  my  cigars." 

"  All  right,"  said  the  mulatto,  holding  out,  without  any  resist 
ance,  first  his  head  and  then  his  arm.  Mr.  Scott  had  brought 
with  him  a  complete  little  field  case  of  surgeon's  instruments. 
He  displayed  all  the  skill  of  an  old  surgeon  in  cleansing  and 
binding  up  the  two  wounds,  while  the  soldier  in  him  was  dis 
played  in  a  desire  to  clear  up  a  certain  point  that  had  remained 
obscure  to  him,  a  desire  that  made  him  ask  :  — 

"  How  is  it  that  you  did  not  cross  the  river  yester 
day?" 

"Because  we  went  to  the  Georgetown  bridge,  Colonel," 
replied  the  other,  "and  the  waters  had  carried  it  away.  There 
was  only  one  of  two  things  to  be  done  —  either  to  go  down 
the  river  to  the  Berkeley  Farms  bridge,  twenty  miles  lower 
down,  or  to  come  up  to  this  one.  As  we  knew  the  roads 
better,  we  chose  this  route,  but  we  were  wrong.  How  is  it, 
though,  Colonel,  that  you  thought  we  should  come  in  this 
direction?" 

"  I  knew  the  Georgetown  bridge  had  been  carried  away,"  said 
Mr.  Scott,  "  and  I  calculated  that  you  would  reason  exactly  as 
you  have  done.  You  said  to  yourself,  '  They  don't  believe  that 
we  would  be  audacious  enough  to  come  so  close  to  the  town.' 
But  it's  not  daring  you're  short  of,  Henry,  or  courage.  Now 
that  the  dressing  is  finished,  is  there  anything  more  I  can  do 
for  you  ?  " 

"  Send  me  a  bottle  of  your  whiskey  to  the  prison,"  replied 
Seymour.  "  And  get  permission  from  the  sheriff  for  me  to 
finish  it  before  I  have  to  swing." 


DOWN  SOUTH  401 

Events  such  as  those  I  had  just  witnessed  are  not  very  ex 
traordinary  in  Philippeville,  in  a  city  where  they  do  not  recol 
lect  having  passed  a  year  without  one  or  two  lynchings. 
Ordinary  life,  therefore,  resumed  its  course  at  once,  and  on 
the  very  evening  of  that  dramatic  day,  when  I  went  to  buy 
some  Richmond  tobacco,  I  recognized  in  the  grocer  who  sold 
it  to  me  one  of  the  horsemen  with  whom  I  had  scoured  the 
forest  in  search  of  Henry  Seymour.  He  was  chewing  his  quid 
with  the  usual  impassible  phlegmatic  air,  and  we  made  no 
more  allusion  to  our  adventure  than  two  Parisians  meeting 
again  at  their  club  in  the  afternoon  would  speak  of  the  bows 
they  had  exchanged  at  the  Bois  in  the  morning. 

In  fact,  the  incident  appeared  to  have  made  a  profound 
impression  only  upon  Mr.  Williams ;  for  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  display  a  pleasure  that  appeared  to  me  almost  indecent, 
although  he  justified  it  by  a  quaint,  business-like  admission. 

"Those  people  from  New  York,  of  whom  I  spoke  to  you, 
will  be  here  the  day  after  to-morrow.  I  telegraphed  to  them 
the  moment  Seymour  was  recaptured.  They  must  have  re 
ceived  the  news  of  his  arrest  as  soon  as  they  heard  of  his 
flight,  and  they  replied  to  me  in  this  telegram,  announcing 
their  arrival.  Ah,  I  was  rather  afraid.  By  the  way,  it  appears 
that  Seymour  is  not  wounded  so  badly  as  to  prevent  his  execu 
tion  to-morrow  (Thursday),  as  it  was  previously  decided." 
DD 


X 

DOWN   SOUTH 
II.    In  Florida 

BETWEEN  Jacksonville  and  Lake  Worth,  along  that  low  penin 
sula —  often  lower  than  the  sea  itself — with  all  the  lagoons, 
lakes,  and  rivers  lying  between  us  and  the  Everglades,  and 
further  away  the  Antilles,  I  saw  landscapes  filled  with  an  almost 
tropical  vegetation  of  a  never-to-be-forgotten  luxuriance.  An 
entire  civilization  is  delineated  in  this  country,  whose  first  pos 
sessors,  the  Seminole  Indians,  had  not  been  conquered  half  a 
century  ago.  The  massacre  of  Dr.  Henry  Perrine  on  one  of 
the  islands  or  keys  —  those  breakwaters  of  the  peninsula  — 
occurred  on  August  7,  1840,  and  the  first  traveller,  a  New 
Yorker,  who  explored  the  Okeechobee,  one  of  the  great  lakes 
of  the  interior,  reached  there  in  1880.  Even  now  an  expedi 
tion  off  the  railway  lines  which  lead  to  Tampa,  on  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  and  to  Palm  Beach,  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  would  entail 
immense  difficulties.  This  does  not  prevent  a  large  number  of 
young  North  Americans,  fond  of  hunting,  yachting,  fishing,  and, 
above  all,  of  free  life,  from  visiting  each  spring  and  winter  these 
almost  inaccessible  parts  of  the  peninsula  with  the  floral  name. 
The  reader  who  may  wish  to  follow  the  tourist's  diary  in  which 
I  here  transcribe  the  various  trips,  will  find  in  it  the  description 
of  a  perfectly  easy  and  modest  excursion.  Had  I  possessed  the 
talent  to  evoke  in  these  pages  the  horizons  on  which  I  feasted 
my  eyes  during  the  three  weeks  of  spring  which  I  passed  in 
this  astonishing  country,  I  should  have  given  the  impression 

402 


DOWN  SOUTH  403 

which  I  still  retain  of  that  Eastern  America  —  the  impression 
of  a  mosaic,  of  a  sudden  change  from  the  land  of  the  factory 
and  of  industry  to  the  most  untouched  and  the  most  virginal 
realm  of  nature  !  What  must  that  Western  shore  be,  that 
Southern  California  which  stretches  from  San  Francisco  to  Los 
Angeles  and  further  south  ?  And  how  am  I  to  console  myself 
for  not  having  had,  in  these  ten  months  of  travel,  the  time  to  go 
there?  The  Americans  are  indeed  right  when  they  talk  of  the 
large  scale  upon  which  their  country  is  established.  It  is  but 
too  large  ! 

JACKSONVILLE,  Easter  Day,  1894. 

A  town  of  quite  small  houses,  with  dusty  streets,  and  all 
along  their  wooden  sidewalks  trees  of  magic  and  exuberant 
verdure,  a  lavish  leafage  which  the  dust  has  been  unable  to 
sully.  Persian  lilacs,  like  those  whose  perfume  I  breathed  in 
the  East,  stand  in  the  very  street,  gigantic,  in  full  bloom,  and 
perfuming  the  heated  air ;  then  there  are  overladen  orange 
trees,  Japanese  medlars,  also  yellow  with  fruit,  bananas,  palm 
trees,  all  of  which  foreshadow  a  different  world  from  that  of 
Georgia.  A  subtle  aroma  seems  to  pass  through  the  sun  which 
shines  in  the  intensely  blue  sky,  like  that  which  overhung  the 
Dead  Sea  last  year,  when,  on  leaving  the  grim  convent  of  Mar 
Saba,  I  perceived  that  still  water  and  the  soft  line  of  the  moun 
tains  of  Moab.  But  history  and  legend  were  mingled  yonder 
with  the  feeling  of  nature.  Here  it  is  nature  alone  with  which 
I  come  in  contact,  nature  with  its  murderous  fauna,  its  violent 
flora,  its  atmospheric  phenomena,  rather  its  cataclysms,  charm 
and  danger,  at  once  perceptible  in  the  very  air  one  breathes,  in 
every  small  detail  which  we  meet  at  the  corner  of  the  street,  in 
the  sudden  alternations  of  temperature,  in  fact,  in  the  entire 
life  of  this  small  town,  so  peaceful  on  this  Easter  morning. 

Negroes  and  still  more  negroes.  It  seems  as  if  the  town 
belonged  to  them  entirely,  so  densely  do  they  throng  on  the  side- 


404  OUTRE-MER 

walks,  the  men  in  Prince  Albert  coats,  with  flowers  in  their 
buttonholes  and  wearing  trousers  of  light  shades,  the  women 
clothed  in  outrageously  bright-colored  dresses,  among  which 
those  of  apple  green,  poppy  red,  and  light  pink  predominate. 
Their  bodices  are  cut  in  "  Figaro "  fashion,  their  hats  are 
decorated  with  ribbons  and  enormous  flowers,  and  their  hair  is 
plaited  in  plaits  which  are  very  thin  and  very  tight,  the  object 
being  to  diminish  or  destroy  the  natural  crinkling.  They  smile, 
showing  their  white  teeth  between  their  thick  lips.  The  white 
teeth  of  the  men  are  displayed  in  a  similar  smile,  and  they  all 
salute  and  approach  one  another  with  that  ceremonious  famil 
iarity,  that  sort  of  natural  affectation  which  is  peculiar  to  this 
strange  race.  A  group  dressed  in  white  pass  along  an  avenue. 
They  are  converts  who  have  just  been  baptized  in  the  river  ! 
All  these  people  are  glad  that  they  are  alive  on  this  warm  April 
Sunday.  I  follow  some,  who  press  forward  toward  a  crowded 
church,  and  through  a  door  I  see  the  usual  mixture  of  conflict 
ing  colors  in  the  dresses  of  the  women  as  they  listen  to  the 
sermon  of  a  famous  preacher.  The  voice  of  the  black  clergy 
man,  standing  at  the  end  on  a  platform,  comes  to  me  over  this 
multicolored  sea.  He  is  in  a  fever  of  excitement,  his  eyes 
showing  their  whites  and  rolling  convulsively.  He  has  just 
depicted  hell  with  the  eloquence  of  an  untaught  visionary,  and 
now  he  is  announcing  salvation  and  offering  Christ  as  a  quack 
offers  a  remedy:  "Do  you  take  Christ?"  The  costumes, 
the  religion,  the  smiles,  the  attention,  suggest  to  me  by  strong 
contrast  what  these  people  were  in  their  savage  state,  and  I 
am  impressed  with  the  singular  game  of  fate,  the  amazing  irony 
of  events  which  makes  us  all  workers  together  for  results  that 
we  never  purposed.  In  contrast  with  this  American  town,  filled 
with  those  happy  negroes,  those  "ladies"  and  those  "gentle 
men  "  of  color,  as  the  whites  call  them  with  polite  irony,  who 
benefit  by  the  railroads  built  by  the  whites,  by  the  tramways 
invented  by  those  whites,  by  the  telephone  organized  by  those 


DOWN   SOUTH  405 

whites,  and  by  the  justice  and  the  laws  elaborated  by  those 
whites,  a  vision  rises  up  before  me  of  far-away  torrid  Africa, 
fifty  or  a  hundred  years  back,  with  its  leaf-huts  under  a  burn 
ing  sun,  its  kings  practising  human  sacrifice,  its  bestial,  idola 
trous,  and  perilous  existence.  Then  comes  the  negro  dealer, 
and  the  next  step  is  taken  in  the  transportation  of  the  grand 
fathers  and  the  ancestors  of  these  folk  in  the  hold  of  a  ship  ! 
Those  ebony  wood  dealers  have  proved  to  be  the  benefactors 
of  the  families  whose  founders  they  thus  transported  to  this 
Southern  country  before  the  war  ruined  their  traffic.  They 
thought  they  were  making  slaves,  and  they  were  making  citi 
zens  of  free  America.  From  time  to  time  history  shows  such 
double-faced  ironies,  as  though  to  prove  to  us  that  we  are 
puppets  in  the  hands  of  an  invisible  Author,  who  constructs  the 
tragedy  of  the  universe  according  to  His  own  ideas.  Our  good 
intentions  end  in  miserable  results,  just  as  was  the  case  with 
those  worthies  of  1789,  who  believed  that  they  were  decreeing 
fraternity,  but  who  were  really  preparing  the  "Terror." 


ST.  AUGUSTINE,  March  30. 

The  hotel  life  of  America  does  not  resemble  any  other. 
You  should  go  to  St.  Augustine  if  you  would  understand  to 
what  extent  these  hard  workers  enjoy  it,  how  much  they  ex 
pect  of  it,  and  how  much  it  meets  their  innermost  personal 
characteristics.  At  this  moment,  although  the  end  of  the  win 
ter  season  is  at  hand,  the  traveller  can  scarcely  find  room  in 
these  palace-like  buildings,  one  of  which  resembles  the  Alcazar, 
another  the  Alhambra,  a  third  the  Escurial,  a  fourth  a  vast 
house  of  the  colonial  period.  And  all  is  on  a  scale  of  extrav 
agant  luxury  which  all  the  travellers  visibly  enjoy.  Unlike  cas 
ual  visitors  in  the  large  hotel  of  a  European  watering-place, 
these  people  feel  as  much  at  ease  in  these  sumptuous  halls,  in 
these  magnificent  palaces,  amid  these  plushes  and  these  paint- 


406  OUTRE-MER 

Ings  as  they  would  at  home  —  even  more  than  at  their  own 
homes.  Many  come  from  new  towns  in  the  centre  and  on  the 
border  of  the  West.  Their  fortunes,  recent  as  those  towns, 
have  roused  in  them  a  desire  for  luxury  and  comfort  which  this 
hotel  satisfies  grossly  but  easily.  The  grossness  they  do  not 
feel,  and  they  delight  in  the  ease.  You  should  see  them  dur 
ing  the  day,  rocking  themselves  on  their  chairs  to  the  sound  of 
the  orchestra,  which,  from  one  to  three  o'clock  and  from  eight 
to  ten,  makes  the  vast  building  vibrate.  After  dinner  a  ball  is 
organized,  and  they  all  dance. 

You  see  men  of  seventy  taking  their  places  in  the  quadrille, 
a  grandmother  polkaing  beside  her  granddaughter,  and  young 
people  waltzing  with  the  incomparable  lightness  of  the  young 
people  over  here.  The  movement  of  these  dances,  the  rapid 
rhythm  of  the  steps,  which  are  really  danced  and  not  walked, 
betray  a  physical  ardor,  an  ardor  for  pleasure  equal  to  the  ardor 
for  work.  All  these  people  are  in  full  dress  ;  young  men  are 
introduced  to  young  ladies  by  other  youths ;  laughing  groups 
gather  everywhere  —  on  the  stairs,  on  the  terraces  —  there  is 
in  the  air  a  good  fellowship  that  would  make  you  believe  that 
these  people  have  known  each  other  for  years  were  it  not  for 
the  introductions  continually  taking  place  around  you.  The 
"very  glad  to  meet  you"  of  these  travellers,  who  cordially 
shake  hands,  though  this  morning  they  did  not  know  one 
another,  gives  you  the  impression  of  a  railway  station,  at  which 
the  tourists  of  an  entire  train  have  been  suddenly  introduced 
with  no  distinction  of  persons. 

ROCKLEDGE,  April  2. 

Almost  immediately  below  St.  Augustine  the  landscape 
changes.  The  palmetto,  which  crept  along  the  ground  as 
undergrowth,  becomes  higher.  It  first  reaches  the  height  of  a 
child,  then  of  a  man,  then  twice  that  of  a  man.  Its  colonnades 
close  up.  Strange  trees  appear,  the  trunks  of  which  spring 


DOWN   SOUTH  407 

from  huge  bulbs  like  that  of  a  gigantic  orchid.  The  orange 
groves  multiply,  becoming  vaster  and  broader,  and  the  burning 
atmosphere  reveals  the  near  approach  of  the  tropics.  But 
American  energy  does  not  seem  to  be  affected  by  the  climate. 
This  South  has  nothing  of  the  South  in  it,  except  its  vegetation 
and  its  light.  The  stern,  energetic  race  is  just  as  intent  as  ever 
on  the  great  struggle.  Cars  loaded  with  fruits  follow  one 
another  on  the  railroad,  as  numerous  as  were  the  cars  rilled 
with  meat  in  the  neighborhood  of  Chicago.  Here,  however, 
they  are  ventilated,  while  the  others  were  frozen.  One  sees 
the  plains  brought  under  cultivation  and  covered  with  oranges, 
not  indigenous  to  the  country.  Not  much  more  than  twenty 
years  ago  the  people  bethought  themselves  of  planting  them  on 
this  soil,  and  already  the  orange  trade  of  Florida  threatens  that 
of  Spain  and  Sicily.  As  in  the  West,  small  towns  spring  up 
beside  the  railway,  and  land  speculation  extends  all  along  the 
line.  I  am  told  that  at  Lake  Worth,  where  I  shall  be  the  day 
after  to-morrow,  one  of  the  magnates  of  this  company  suddenly 
built  in  the  wilderness  a  hotel  which  is  a  palace,  and  then 
extended  the  line  to  reach  his  hotel,  and  that  a  winter  resort  is 
in  course  of  growth  out  there  as  by  enchantment.  Here  again 
you  find  that  infatuation  for  Europe,  which  in  this  people 
always  mingles  with  the  intense  originality  of  their  spirit  of 
enterprise.  The  idea  of  giving  to  their  country  a  Riviera 
haunts  these  great  Florida  speculators,  and  they  have  suc 
ceeded,  but  without  being  able  to  give  their  coast  that  dainty 
flower  of  cosmopolitan  worldliness,  that  which  forms  the  charm 
of  our  Provence,  nor  the  beauty  of  the  environs  of  Genoa,  that 
home  of  the  finest  museums  and  churches  of  divine  Italy.  But 
if  Florida  has  not  the  elegance  of  Cannes,  nor  the  fetes  of  Nice, 
nor  the  enchantment  of  art,  what  landscapes,  what  nature  she 
has! 

I  walked  this  evening  on  the  edge  of  the  Indian  River, 
which  I  shall  descend  to-morrow.     It  is  a  long  lagoon,  six 


408  OUTRE-MER 

miles  broad  in  certain  places  and  fifty  feet  at  others.  A  slip  of 
land,  stretching  out  indefinitely,  separates  it  from  the  ocean, 
and  it  thus  extends  along  the  entire  peninsula,  lapping  the  quiet 
beaches  of  the  winter  resorts,  such  as  the  one  at  which  I  have 
stopped  to-day.  It  was  five  o'clock.  The  sun  was  sinking  in 
the  west,  enveloping  the  luxuriant  vegetation  in  a  sort  of  quiv 
ering  luminous  dust. 

I  was  following  between  the  palms  the  path  which  leads 
along  the  shore.  Those  beautiful  trees  were  growing  up  on  all 
sides,  not  in  clumps  as  in  the  oases  of  the  East,  but  like  a  forest, 
the  gigantic  trunks  ending  in  large  full  green  sprays,  which  the 
wind  moved  with  a  metallic  murmur.  Between  those  im 
mense  trunks,  which  looked  as  though  padded  with  a  woven 
bark,  immense  plants  of  a  scent  unknown  to  me  rose  out  of 
thickets  covered  with  full-blown  flowers,  red  and  bluish,  —  flow 
ers  twice  as  large  as  a  lily,  that  looked  as  if  made  of  cloth  or  of 
silk  velvet.  Green  oaks  were  mingled  with  those  flowers,  in 
terspersed  with  palms  smothered  in  a  network  of  pale  green 
creepers.  At  times,  at  some  spot  during  the  walk,  a  vista 
would  suddenly  open  up  and  reveal  an  orange  grove,  with  the 
golden  fruit  shining  amid  the  lustrous  leaves.  The  water  of 
the  lagoon  quivered  under  the  movement  of  the  tide  which 
through  a  neighboring  gully  made  itself  felt  even  here.  It 
rippled  against  the  shore  amid  those  standing  trees  and  against 
the  fallen  trunks,  with  a  rhythmical  monotony  in  which  was 
a  palpitation  like  the  breathing  of  the  ocean,  out  of  sight 
behind  yonder  protecting  slip  of  land. 

They  call  it  "  Fairyland,"  a  term  calling  up  old  recollections 
of  the  lands  of  fogs  —  of  Ireland,  of  Scotland  —  whence  have 
come  so  many  of  the  colonists  established  here.  Light  yawls 
glided  about  on  the  surface  of  the  lagoon,  broad  of  hull  and 
high  of  sail ;  they  were  full  of  wind  now  —  a  warm  wind,  a 
languid  and  ardent  breath.  All  along  the  road  was  a  suc 
cession  of  cottages,  their  covered  verandas  all  facing  the  forest. 


DOWN   SOUTH  409 

Here  a  sick  woman  was  swinging  in  a  hammock.  There  a 
youth  with  a  faded  complexion  was  reading  and  dreaming. 
It  was  a  scene  of  nature  where  one  could  die  gently,  not  caring 
to  fight  any  more,  longing  to  be  absorbed,  rocked,  put  to  sleep. 
Thinking  of  the  sharp  winter  of  Boston  and  New  York,  with 
its  snow  and  sleighs,  I  felt  how  large  this  land  is,  how  it  touches 
at  both  extremes  of  climate.  Realizing  the  vastness  of  this 
continent,  I  asked  myself  again  if,  the  conquest  once  established, 
—  it  is  so  recent,  —  the  American  will  allow  himself  to  be  im 
pressed  with  this  diversity  of  climate,  and  if  he  will  create  for 
himself  a  gentler  civilization  in  these  States,  one  more  analogous 
to  this  light  and  beauty.  And,  as  though  in  ironical  reply,  I 
perceived  at  a  turn  in  the  road  a  drawing-room  car  going  at 
full  speed  among  the  trees,  and  on  the  trunk  of  a  palm  tree, 
lighted  up  by  the  rays  of  the  setting  sun,  I  saw  a  board  upon 
which  I  read  that  a  certain  mineral  spring  is  the  "  Czar  of  Table 

Waters  !  " 

ON  THE  INDIAN  RIVER,  April  3. 

I  resume  this  diary  on  a  boat  of  singular  form  which  is 
descending  toward  the  military  post  of  Jupiter,  whence  the 
railroad  takes  me  to  Lake  Worth.  The  lower  part  is  a  sort 
of  raft,  manned  by  a  unique  crew  composed  entirely  of  blacks. 
Piles  start  out  of  it,  supporting  a  kind  of  deck,  and  above  that 
is  a  bridge.  In  the  space  between  the  deck  and  the  bridge 
there  is  a  large  dining-room.  Small  cabins  open  out  from  it 
on  both  sides.  The  wheel,  which  slowly  propels  this  construc 
tion,  is  behind,  made  both  for  these  waters,  which  are  deep, 
and  for  others  where  the  flat  bottom  of  the  raft  rubs  constantly 
against  the  sandy  bottom.  I  shall  without  doubt  be  one  of  the 
last  to  descend  the  lagoon  in  this  fashion  ;  for  the  railroad  will 
soon  be  opened  between  Titusville  and  Jupiter,  so  that  we 
shall  be  able  to  go  from  New  York  to  Lake  Worth  without 
changing  cars.  The  captain,  an  American  of  the  Southern 
States,  who  has  much  Spanish  and  French  blood,  with  the 


410  OUTRE-MER 

clever  little  face  of  an  inhabitant  of  Tarbes  or  of  Pau,  and  with 
inexpressibly  aristocratic,  yet  simple,  manners,  shows  me  the 
rails  on  the  banks,  and  says  -to  me  :  "  Whenever  you  see  a 
railroad  sleeper,  you  see  the  tomb  of  a  steamboat  man."  The 
railroad  will  go  quicker.  The  traveller  will  avoid  a  long  day 
of  eight  to  ten  hours  on  the  turns  of  the  river.  But  the  railroad 
will  never  give  him  the  same  knowledge  of  the  river. 

First  of  all,  immediately  after  embarking  at  Fort  Pierce, 
there  is  a  broad  expanse  of  water  shut  in  on  the  left  by  the 
narrow,  wooded  strip  of  land  which  separates  it  from  the  sea. 
Scarcely  a  trace  of  cultivation  is  to  be  seen  either  to  the  left 
or  to  the  right,  where  the  mainland  stretches  out,  but  in  most 
places  is  that  luxuriant  vegetation  which  has  increased  con 
tinually  ever  since  we  left  Rockledge.  The  closer  the  banks, 
the  more  we  perceive  the  inextricable  matting  of  the  branches. 
There  is  a  certain  tree,  the  trunk  of  which  serves  as  a  crown 
to  roots  exposed  above  the  water,  which  are  twisted  like  an 
enormous  knot  of  serpents.  One  might  say  that  they  were  the 
motionless  feelers  of  a  monstrous  animal,  the  body  of  which 
would  be  formed  by  the  trunk  of  the  tree,  which  was  pumping 
the  water  greedily,  insatiably,  by  its  fifty  parched  mouths. 
Beside  it  are  palms,  nearly  all  burned  and  reddened.  Grasses 
and  briers  interlace  and  form  colossal  thickets  twice  the  height 
of  a  man,  where  one  would  imagine  the  most  formidable 
beasts  must  lie  in  wait.  At  the  place  where  the  river  becomes 
narrow,  the  great  voice  of  the  ocean  is  heard.  All  at  once 
it  appears  above  the  line  of  trees,  immense  and  blue,  a  sap 
phire  blue,  a  lapis  blue,  with  a  trace  on  that  intense  azure  of  a 
large  almost  purple  vein,  so  violet  is  it.  It  is  the  Gulf 
Stream,  that  mysterious  flow  of  hot  water  through  the  cold 
depths  of  the  Atlantic.  Enormous  waves  break  in  crests  of 
white  foam  upon  the  beach,  all  of  which  we  see  from  the 
bridge  of  the  boat,  so  thin  and  low  is  the  preserving  slip  of 
land  at  this  point.  It  is  broken,  and  a  gully  appears,  through 


DOWN   SOUTH  411 

which  the  high  waves  hurl  themselves,  stopped  at  once  by  an 
island  of  yellow  sand,  upon  which  there  are  thousands  of  sea 
gulls  and  pelicans.  The  noise  of  the  wheel  of  our  approach 
ing  boat  frightens  them  away.  A  whirlwind  of  scattered  wings 
whitens  the  sky,  where  the  black  spots  made  by  the  long- 
legged  waders  disappear  less  quickly.  I  hear  the  prolonged 
cry  of  the  seagulls,  like  that  of  a  sick  child,  a  wail  so  human 
that  it  is  painful. 

LAKE  WORTH,  April  4. 

I  arrived  at  Lake  Worth  yesterday  evening  after  nightfall. 
Here,  again,  is  one  of  those  impressions  of  contrast,  such  as 
America  alone  can  give  —  a  corner  of  the  world.  A  corner  of 
a  peninsula  very  far  from  towns  large  or  small,  without  vil 
lages,  without  cultivation  even,  the  whole  extent  a  dangerous 
and  inaccessible  solitude,  until,  all  at  once,  through  the  whim 
of  a  railroad  owner,  a  hotel  is  built  which  is  a  palace.  I  see 
the  one,  of  which  much  had  been  said,  filling  a  break  on  the 
horizon  with  its  enormous  and  luminous  mass;  beyond  it  a 
large  sheet  of  water,  wherein  trembles  the  reflection  of  a  sky 
brilliant  with  stars.  The  train  has  stopped  at  the  edge  of 
Lake  Worth,  this  vast  salt  pond  which  bathes  Palm  Beach  yon 
der,  the  beach  of  palms  where  that  fantastic  hotel  is  situated. 
A  pleasure  boat,  a  trim  steamer,  furnished  with  extraordinary 
caprice,  comes  to  meet  us,  and,  after  some  manoeuvring,  exe 
cuted  somewhat  at  random  on  this  dark  water,  to  avoid  here 
a  sand  bank,  there  the  piles  of  a  future  jetty,  we  see  the 
palace,  as  luxurious  as  though  it  stood  in  New  York  on  the 
sidewalks  of  Fifth  Avenue,  with  its  colonnaded  entrance, 
lighted  by  electricity  and  perforated  with  elevators.  Its  hall 
is  filled  with  men  and  women  in  ball  dresses,  who  are  dancing 
wildly,  and  who  show  complexions  burnt  by  the  torrid  sun  of 
the  day,  by  the  long  hours  spent  on  the  sandy  beach,  and  the 
baths  in  that  surf,  which  is  so  close  by  and  which  the  Gulf 


412  OUTRE-MER 

Stream  warms  like  the  Mediterranean  in  summer.  From 
time  to  time  a  couple  of  dancers  come  upon  the  terrace  to 
breathe  in  the  soft,  tropical  night,  and  lazily  they  suck  oranges, 
which  everywhere  fill  large  baskets,  perfuming  the  atmosphere 
with  a  sweet  aroma,  while  the  breeze  coming  from  over  the 
gardens  wafts  on  to  the  terrace  and  into  the  hall  the  odors  of 
countless  flowers. 

What  a  country  to  be  happy  in,  after  the  manner  of  a  plant 
that  grows  in  the  sun,  unmindful  and  without  desire  to  be 
elsewhere!  In  opening  my  window  in  the  morning,  I  see, 
between  the  lake  and  the  house,  a  forest  of  cocoanut  trees. 
The  fruit  appears  in  the  middle  of  the  leaves,  hung  in  bunches, 
and  each  is  as  large  as  a  child's  head.  In  going  toward  the 
ocean  just  now,  I  inhaled  the  perfume  of  a  rose-laurel  wood, 
which  a  tramway,  drawn  by  a  single  horse,  crosses  for  a  mile. 
The  carriage  in  passing  brushes  the  beautiful  trees  with  their 
flesh-colored  flowers,  and,  as  the  people  have  not  even  trimmed 
the  branches,  we  tear  and  destroy  living  flowers.  But  this 
vegetation  is  so  rank  that  the  damage  will  be  repaired  to 
morrow.  A  warm  odor  and  a  sense  of  growth  which  inebri 
ates,  exhales  from  these  trees  and  from  these  grasses,  from 
these  fields  of  pineapples,  and  forests  of  cocoanut  trees. 
Nature  is  at  one  and  the  same  time  too  violent  and  too  soft. 
The  sea  at  the  end  of  this  alley  of  rose-laurels  is  too  blue.  It 
is  no  longer  the  wild  ocean,  it  is  the  Mediterranean,  the  vo 
luptuous,  the  feminine  — .  But  no.  We  look  closer,  and  the 
colossal  swelling  of  the  waves  shows  that  it  is  the  great  and 
powerful  Atlantic.  Over  that  azure  there  passes  again  the 
great  dark  artery  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  and  we  notice  gigantic 
forms  of  fishes  as  they  sport  in  the  blue  and  violet  tints  of  the 
billows.  They  are  sharks.  Their  presence  does  not  prevent 
the  young  Americans  from  bathing  on  that  free  beach.  I  hear 
one  say  to  another  who  hesitates,  "Go,  and  run  your  risk." 

That  saying  contains  an  entire  philosophy. 


DOWN  SOUTH  413 

APRIL  7. 

I  am  going  to  leave  to-morrow,  at  sunrise,  this  adorable 
oasis  of  gardens  thrown  in  between  this  lagoon  and  the  Atlan 
tic,  being  bound  for  New  York;  thence,  by  one  of  the  "ocean 
greyhounds  "  I  shall  go  to  Liverpool  and  then  to  France. 


XI 

HOMEWARD 

AT  SEA,  ABOARD  THE ,  April,  1894. 

ANOTHER  fifteen  days  in  New  York  to  classify  my  notes,  to 
verify  some  of  them,  to  revisit  places  which  I  had  visited 
before,  to  speak  with  people  whom  I  had  already  known, — 
in  short,  to  bid  an  adieu,  not  without  regret,  to  this  land, 
which  is  really  so  captivating,  since  one  breathes  here  at  every 
moment  the  breath  of  liberty, —  all  this  has  been  done,  and 
here  I  am  once  more  on  the  Atlantic,  on  board  an  English 
steamer  this  time,  and  one  which  is  quicker  than  the  steamer 
in  which  I  "crossed  the  pond" — as  the  Yankees  familiarly 
say  —  last  August.  We  left  New  York  on  Saturday  morning; 
to-day  is  Wednesday,  and  to-morrow,  Thursday,  we  shall  be 
at  Queenstown,  in  Ireland,  and  the  day  after  to-morrow,  Fri 
day,  in  Liverpool.  When  the  Anglo-Saxons  take  upon  them 
selves  to  vie  with  one  another,  their  keenness  of  competition 
knows  no  impossibilities.  The  other  boat  was  11,500  tons 
register;  this  one  registers  13,000  tons.  The  engines  of  the 
other  were  of  20,000  horse  power;  the  engines  of  this  one 
have  a  horse  power  of  30,000.  The  former  was  580  feet  long, 
this  one  is  620  feet. 

And  just  as,  on  the  other,  we  were  practically  on  Ameri 
can  soil,  so,  on  this,  we  are  already  in  England.  I  recognize 
it  by  twenty  small  signs;  by  the  politeness  and  the  exactness 
of  the  attendants;  by  the  somewhat  heavy  and  dark  look  of 
the  drawing-rooms,  which  have  no  resplendent  gorgeousness  of 
plush  and  nickel;  by  the  economy  of  the  table,  not  weighted 

414 


HOMEWARD  415 

with  the  innumerable  dishes  of  American  prodigality.  But 
when  we  are  returning  from  so  long  a  journey,  we  no  longer 
have  the  heart  to  take  pleasure  in  observations  of  this  descrip 
tion.  The  harvest  of  strange  sensations  is  reaped.  What 
germs  this  journey  to  America  may  have  sown  in  me;  what 
profound!  modifications  contact  with  that  civilization,  so  full 
of  life  and  so  different  from  ours,  may  have  made  in  my 
thoughts,  I  know  not.  In  turning  over  this  diary,  I  find  that, 
above  all  things,  I  was  going  to  seek  in  the  United  States 
light  as  to  the  future,  foreshadowed  by  those  three  great  and 
inevitable  powers  which  are  transforming  the  Old  World, 
namely,  Democracy,  Science,  and  the  Race  question.  I  have, 
in  fact,  seen  at  work  an  immense  democracy,  which  has  caused 
a  scientific  spirit  to  penetrate,  in  the  form  of  industry,  into  the 
smallest  detail  of  life,  and,  in  the  form  of  education,  into  the 
soul  of  its  soul.  I  have  seen  living,  side  by  side,  blacks  and 
whites,  Germans  and  Irish,  Chinamen  and  Scandinavians, 
Italians  and  Anglo-Saxons.  What  hypotheses  has  that  sight 
induced  me  to  form,  by  analogy,  as  to  the  morrow  of  our  own 
civilization? 

By  analogy?  But  can  any  analogy  be  established?  Has 
what  we  understand  among  us  by  democracy  anything  in  com 
mon  with  the  form  of  civilization  which  the  Americans  have 
established  in  their  vast  Republic  ?  Yes,  if  we  merely  busy 
ourselves  with  that  vague  programme  which  Lincoln  —  and 
Napoleon,  also,  by  the  way  —  formulated  in  these  terms : 
"  For  the  people  and  by  the  people."  No,  if,  on  the  one  side, 
we  look  at  the  general  spirit  of  the  country,  and,  on  the 
other,  at  the  customs  which  that  spirit  is  working  out  in 
France,  that  country  among  the  great  States  of  Europe  which 
believes  itself  to  be  the  most  advanced  on  the  path  of  reform, 
we  shall  find  that  the  word  "  democracy  "  signifies  that  all  the 
powers  of  the  State  are  delegated  to  the  representatives  of 
the  people,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  majority.  And,  however 


416  OUTRE-MER 

oppressive,  however  unjust,  may  be  the  measures  taken  by 
those  representatives,  the  moment  that  they  meet  the  desire 
of  the  greater  number,  we  consider  them  not  only  legal,  but 
democratic.  Thus  conceived,  democracy  consists  in  the 
constant  sacrifice  of  the  individual  to  the  community. 

But  it  is  precisely  in  the  contrary  sense  that  American 
democracy  works.  It  is  toward  the  more  intense,  the  more 
complete  development  of  the  individual  that  it  has  striven 
until  now,  to  the  diminution,  to  the  suppression,  if  it  were 
possible,  of  the  influence  of  the  State.  On  arriving  at  New 
York,  what  strikes  the  stranger?  The  individual  energy,  the 
spirit  of  enterprise,  manifested  everywhere,  and  visibly  with 
out  control.  If  he  begins,  as  I  did,  the  study  of  the  country 
from  the  top,  from  that  part  of  society  which  entertains  and 
amuses  itself,  what  characteristic  strikes  him  first?  It  is  the 
application  of  the  same  energy  to  social  elegancies,  the  result 
of  which  gives  the  European  visitor  that  continuous  feeling  of 
"too  much,"  of  abuse,  of  exaggeration.  It  is,  again,  the 
energy  and  the  robust  development  of  the  individual  which 
form  the  characteristic  of  the  American  woman  and  the  young 
girl.  It  is  also  by  energy  and  individuality  that  the  man  of 
business  is  distinguished  in  this  country,  and  the  feebler 
individualities  of  his  employees,  in  their  struggle  against  him, 
have  no  other  resource  than  to  associate  themselves  for  the 
purpose;  or,  in  other  words,  they  can  do  nothing  but  defend 
themselves,  without  asking  anything  of  the  State. 

It  is  again  by  energy  and  individuality  that  the  people  of 
the  rough  and  savage  West  maintain  themselves.  The  energy 
of  individuality  and  the  spirit  of  enterprise  are  taught  in  the 
schools  of  the  most  refined  part  of  the  country, —  in  other 
words,  in  New  England, —  and  these  schools,  moreover,  are 
all  founded  by  individual  generosity  or  municipal  generosity, 
which  comes  to  the  same  thing.  This  feature  is  so  essential 
that  it  is  found  again  in  the  pleasures  of  the  Americans,  all  of 


HOMEWARD  417 

which  are  in  harmony  with  purposed  and  personal  action,  and 
it  is  so  profound  that  it  resists  the  weakening  influence  of 
climate.  Constantly,  in  the  South,  you  meet  with  a  living 
testimony  of  that  Northern  activity,  and  you  find  that  it  is 
invincible  even  near  the  tropics.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  resume" 
of  the  brief  inquiry  which  I  made  in  my  too  short  journey 
through  that  immense  Republic.  Conceived  and  practised  in 
that  way,  democracy  results,  not  as  with  us  in  a  perpetual 
levelling,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in  bringing  about  astonishing 
inequalities  between  individuals,  who  forcibly  devour  one 
another.  The  vital  law  of  competition  is  at  work  there,  as  in 
nature,  to  such  a  point  that,  at  times,  this  democracy  gives 
the  impression  of  an  aristocracy, —  I  had  almost  said  a  feudal 
ism.  The  president  of  a  great  railroad,  the  proprietor  of  a 
great  newspaper,  the  master  of  a  great  factory  at  New  York, 
at  Chicago,  at  St.  Paul,  has  more  real  power  than  a  prince. 
Only,  he  is  a  prince  who  has  made  himself,  and  a  similar 
conquest  is  within  the  reach  of  all,  provided  they  have  the 
strength.  Equal  social  possibility, —  such  is  the  democratic 
formula  in  America.  Equal  social  reality, —  such  is  the 
formula  in  Europe,  and  particularly  in  France,  since  the 
Revolution  of  1789.  I  know  nothing  so  contradictory. 

There  is  a  second  difference  which  does  not  permit  of  an 
analogy  between  the  democratic  ideal  United  States  and  ours. 
The  United  States,  even  after  allowing  for  the  socialistic  demon 
strations  of  German  immigrants,  appears  to  the  traveller  to  be 
the  least  revolutionary  of  countries ;  the  one  where  constitu 
tional  problems  are  the  most  definitely  and  stringently  regu 
lated.  It  is  a  conservative  democracy  —  that  is  to  say,  exactly 
the  contrary  of  ours.  This  is  because  the  country  has  instinc 
tively  put  into  practice  the  maxim  which  dominates  the  lives  of 
nations,  as  it  dominates  those  of  individuals.  Things  maintain 
themselves  by  the  same  conditions  which  brought  them  into 
existence.  In  giving  full  play  to  his  individual  energy,  the 
EE 


418  OUTRE-MER 

American  has  conformed  to  the  law  of  his  origin.  Who  made 
this  country  what  it  is?  Exiles,  rebels,  adventurers.  They 
came  to  this  new  land  to  recreate  for  themselves  an  existence 
of  adventure,  of  daring,  and  of  feats  of  will.  A  social  compact, 
fixed  enough  to  prevent  those  wills  being  turned  into  tools  of 
disorder,  broad  and  flexible  enough  to  mutilate  nothing  of 
them  —  there,  in  an  abstract  form,  is  the  programme  which  the 
doctors  of  social  science  would  have  given  to  this  country,  and 
which  it  has  by  instinct  realized.  They  did  not  reach  democ 
racy  through  reasoning ;  they  found  themselves  established 
under  that  system.  Thence  results  that  sort  of  ease  in  liberty 
which  is  one  of  the  striking  features  of  America,  and  that 
absence  of  defensive  laws. 

As  a  result  of  their  origin,  all  the  countries  thus  built  up  have 
that  same  profound  unity,  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  same 
plasticity,  whatever  may  be  otherwise  the  nature  of  their  gov 
ernment.  Aristocratic  England  is  a  proof  of  this.  It  is  a 
lesson  which  we  can  take  from  the  American  democracy,  but 
to  practise  it,  it  would  be  necessary  for  us  to  work  in  a  direc 
tion  opposite  to  that  in  which  the  democratic  party  has  been 
working  for  a  hundred  years.  We  should  have  to  seek  what 
remains  of  old  France  and  attach  ourselves  again  to  it  with 
every  fibre,  and  first  of  all  we  should  have  to  restore  the  prov 
ince  with  its  natural  and  hereditary  unity,  instead  of  the  arti 
ficial  and  parcelled- out  "  department  "  ;  municipal  autonomy 
instead  of  administrative  centralization  ;  local  and  fecund  univer 
sities  instead  of  our  official  and  dead  university  ;  then  we  should 
have  to  reconstitute  the  landed  family  by  allowing  complete  lib 
erty  in  the  disposal  of  property  by  will ;  we  should  have  to  pro 
tect  labor  by  the  reconstitution  of  corporations  ;  we  should  have 
to  restore  to  the  religious  life  its  vigor  and  dignity  by  the  sup 
pression  of  the  budget  of  public  worship  and  by  giving  religious 
associations  the  right  to  own  property  freely;  in  a  word,  on 
this  point,  as  on  the  other,  the  task  before  us  would  be  the 


HOMEWARD  419 

systematic  undoing  of  the  murderous  work  of  the  French  Revo 
lution.  This  is  the  advice  which,  for  the  impartial  observer, 
stands  out  from  all  the  remarks  made  upon  the  United  States. 
If  their  democracy  is  so  vigorous  and  strong,  it  is  because  the 
individual  is  free  and  powerful  in  a  State  which  is  reduced  to 
a  minimum  of  action.  If  it  unites  all  wills  in  an  immense  har 
mony,  it  is  because  it  is  truly  national.  Our  own  revolution 
has  so  completely  dried  up  the  sources  of  French  vitality, 
because  it  has  established  a  regime  in  which  the  State  centralizes 
in  itself  all  the  vital  forces  of  the  country,  and  because  it  has 
violently  cut  asunder  all  historical  links  between  our  past  and 
our  present.  This  criticism  is  not  new.  The  three  most  lucid 
analysts  of  contemporary  France,  —  Balzac,  Le  Play,  and  Taine, 
—  starting  from  very  different  premises,  have  nevertheless 
arrived  at  the  same  conclusions.  It  is  not  without  interest  to 
note  that  it  is  also  the  conclusion  formed  from  a  visit  to  the 
country  which  is  most  often  used  as  an  illustration  by  the  parti 
sans  of  that  revolution. 

Thus  I  have  learned  to  translate  in  America  the  word  "  de 
mocracy  "  into  realities  quite  contrary  to  those  which  it  repre 
sents  in  Europe,  and  consequently  to  fear  it  less.  For  if 
democracy  is  reconcilable  with  the  most  intense  development 
of  individuality  and  personality,  all  the  objections  launched 
against  that  form  of  civilization  prove  groundless  at  once.  It 
is  for  us  to  lead  it  in  that  direction  by  every  means  in  our 
power.  I  have  learned  there  also  to  recognize  the  social  bene 
factions  of  science.  It  is  a  common  idea  among  us,  and  one 
to  which  I  have  for  my  part  adhered  too  often,  that  a  principle 
of  nihilism  is  concealed  within  it,  which  renders  it  incompatible 
with  the  higher  needs  of  the  heart  of  man.  Even  those  who 
do  not  go  so  far  as  to  condemn  it  thus  in  the  name  of  the 
ideal,  are  inclined  to  believe  that  it  is  a  bad  educator  of  the 
people.  They  consider  that  many  of  the  moral  maladies  of 
the  present  moment  are  caused  by  the  intoxication  which  those 


420  OUTRE-MER 

results,  imperfectly  understood,  produce  in  ill-prepared  brains. 
The  pages  in  which  these  objections  have  been  formulated  and 
commented  upon  during  the  last  twenty  years,  and  in  which 
minds  less  competent  than  well  intentioned  have  proclaimed 
the  bankruptcy  of  that  science  which  has  excited,  for  forty 
years,  such  enthusiasm  among  its  devotees,  the  Kenans,  the 
Taines,  the  Flauberts,  would,  if  collected  into  volumes,  fill  a 
library. 

The  enthusiastic  hope  of  these  great  literary  men  in  the 
future  results  of  positive  methods  was  not  entirely  justified. 
For  the  reaction  of  to-day  the  justification  is  not  greater. 
A  visit  to  the  United  States,  where  these  methods  have  most 
constantly  and  most  powerfully  penetrated  into  the  pettiest 
details  of  life,  puts  things  back  into  their  true  place.  We 
recognize,  first  of  all,  how  incorrect  are  the  statements  of  our 
moralists  in  regard  to  this  general  nihilism  of  science,  since  it 
exists  yonder  side  by  side  with  the  most  fervent  Christianity  — 
all  New  England  is  a  proof  of  it  —  and  neither  does  Christianity 
stand  in  the  way  of  scientific  development,  nor  does  that  de 
velopment  lessen  the  Christian  faith.  In  an  essay  devoted  to 
a  celebrated  article  of  M.  Taine  on  "  The  Church  in  France," 
M.  1'Abbe"  de  Broglie,  one  of  the  most  enlightened  apologists 
of  the  time,  very  justly  remarked  that  the  word  "  science  "  long 
signified  with  us  two  very  distinct  ideas,  —  on  the  one  hand,  a 
group  of  positive  notions  acquired  by  experimental  procedure ; 
and  on  the  other,  the  hypothesis  of  pure  metaphysics  con 
structed  upon  those  notions.  In  truth,  the  group  of  positive 
notions  alone  constitutes  true  science.  The  American  mind, 
with  its  distributive  lucidity,  appears  to  have  seen  this  from 
the  beginning,  since  religious  and  scientific  life  have  grown  as 
though  in  parallel  lines  without  stumbling  against  one  another. 
Its  schools  and  universities  have  thus  shown,  as  an  object  lesson 
might  do,  the  exactness  of  the  theory  put  forward  by  Herbert 
Spencer  at  the  opening  of  the  First  Principles  in  regard  to  the 


HOMEWARD  421 

possible  reconciliation  between  religion  and  science  through 
agnosticism. 

The  first  having  for  its  object  the  unknown,  that  is  to  say,  by 
definition,  the  domain  of  research  which  escapes  the  second, 
all  that  is  necessary  in  order  that  these  two  powers,  equally 
necessary  to  the  human  soul,  should  work  side  by  side  with 
out  touching  one  another,  is  not  to  allow  the  two  empires  to 
become  intermingled.  That  agreement,  which  America  has 
succeeded  iri,  we,  in  our  turn,  can  and  must  succeed  in,  and  it 
is  one  of  the  duties  to  which  her  example  invites  the  best  of 
us.  This  land  of  initiative  also  points  out  to  us  that  this  same 
science,  in  spite  of  all  the  prejudices  to  which  I  made  allusion 
just  now,  is  an  excellent  educator  of  the  lower  classes.  But  it 
is  on  the  condition  that  it  shall  be  taken  really  as  an  educator 
—  that  is  to  say,  that  it  shall  appeal  to  the  will  through  the 
intellect.  The  Americans  have  only  obtained  the  vitality  of 
their  industrial  civilization  by  submitting  to  this  rule.  All 
culture  is  duplicated  in  their  schools  with  a  corresponding 
activity ;  all  knowledge  tends  to  practice ;  and  the  most  sci 
entific  of  teachings,  understood  in  this  way,  produced  neither 
degraded  people  nor  rebels. 

On  one  point,  my  visit  to  the  United  States  has  not  modified 
my  ideas ;  I  mean  in  regard  to  the  opinion  which  I  have  con 
ceived  of  the  irreconcilable  antagonism  of  races.  I  had  left 
behind  me  a  Europe  all  rent  asunder,  even,  in  time  of  peace, 
by  that  antagonism.  I  have  not  found  that  the  New  World 
has  escaped  it  to  any  greater  degree.  When  we  strive  to  guess 
the  future  of  America,  it  is  always,  as  with  that  of  Europe,  from 
the  side  of  this  problem  of  races  that  we  end  by  looking  at  it. 
If  one  day  a  conflict  between  the  West  and  the  East  should 
break  out,  —  and  so  many  signs  seem,  at  times,  to  point  to  it,  — 
the  true  principle  will  be  there,  in  this  influx  of  elements  of  the 
Germanic  and  Scandinavian  race,  so  abundant  that  the  civiliza 
tion  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin  is  no  longer  able  to  assimilate  them. 


422  OUTRE-MER 

This  is,  however,  but  a  hypothesis,  and  the  majority  of  Ameri 
cans  refuse  even  to  discuss  it,  so  great  is  their  confidence  in 
the  method  adopted  by  their  Republic  for  the  settlement  of 
these  differences  of  race. 

That  method  is  very  simple,  and  in  conformity  with  the  deep 
respect  of  individualism  upon  which  all  their  democracy  is 
founded.  It  consists  in  multiplying  indefinitely  the  centres  of 
local  activity,  and  consequently  in  continuously  breaking  up, 
by  means  of  localized  action,  the  forces  which,  massed  in 
groups,  would  be  too  powerful. 

It  is  to  be  remarked,  in  fact,  that  the  grave  troubles  from 
which  America  has  suffered  during  these  past  years  arise  from 
the  very  centralized  associations  which  have  been  built  up  con 
trary  to  the  tradition  of  individualism.  True,  Europe,  bound 
as  she  is  by  historic  necessities,  cannot  borrow  this  method 
and  break  the  unity  of  the  great  countries  of  which  she  is 
composed.  There  is  to  be  found,  however,  in  this  example, 
an  indication  of  general  policy.  It  is  a  return  to  the  theory 
of  little  independent  States  —  replaced,  alas!  by  that  of 
nationalities  —  which,  systematically  applied  on  the  morrow 
of  the  First  Empire,  assured  us  so  many  years  of  such  fruitful 
peace.  The  solution  of  the  problem  of  races  will  be  found  in 
a  recast  geography,  which,  without  hindering  hereditary  ten 
dencies,  parcels  out  the  fields  of  activity.  When  the  crisis 
of  acute  militarism,  which  the  most  brutal  and  the  most 
clumsy  of  annexations  forces  upon  us,  is  solved,  either  pacifi 
cally  or  otherwise,  that  theory  will  impose  itself  upon  those 
who  will  construct  the  new  map  of  the  Old  World,  and  it  will 
be  a  first  step  toward  the  United  States  of  Europe,  which  was 
the  dream  of  King  Henry  IV.,  and  which  remains  the  ideal 
of  true  civilization,  reconcilable  with  all  forms  of  government 
and  all  the  interior  traditions. 

Twenty-four  hours  have  passed  since  I  lingered  over  the 
details  of  some  of  the  salutary  teachings  which  the  New  World 


HOMEWARD  423 

can  give  the  Old.  I  have  said  enough,  in  the  course  of  my 
traveller's  diary,  of  the  defects  which  have  shocked  me  in  that 
New  World,  of  its  incoherence  and  its  haste,  of  the  crudity  of 
the  streets  of  its  big  towns,  of  the  excesses  of  its  fashionable 
life,  and  its  lack  of  equilibrium,  measure,  and  taste;  of  the 
too  artificial  tension  of  its  culture,  which  gives  to  its  women, 
as  to  its  flowers,  the  artificiality  of  hothouse  plants;  of  that 
abuse  of  energy  which  results  in  a  sort  of  ferocity  in  the 
competition  between  business  men,  and  which  reduces  the 
beaten  —  the  lower  classes  —  to  a  too  cruel  extremity  of  mis 
fortune;  of  the  corruption  of  its  police,  its  magistrates,  and 
its  politicians,  that  indefinable  something  which  excessive 
consciousness  mixes  with  education;  and  finally,  of  the  ab 
sence  of  relaxation  and  abandonment  in  its  pleasures.  But 
what  then?  All  the  defects  of  this  society  are  summed  up  in 
this,  —  that  it  has  dispensed  with  time.  The  sudden  trans 
planting  of  the  most  energetic  and  the  most  unfortunate  chil 
dren  of  Europe  to  this  new  country  has  produced  too  rapid  a 
movement.  But  why  rake  up  these  defects  afresh?  The  more 
I  proceed,  the  more  I  understand  the  justice  of  the  phrase  of 
Goethe,  "When  we  do  not  speak  of  things  with  a  partiality 
full  of  love,  what  we  say  is  not  worth  being  repeated,"  and, 
at  the  moment  when  I  am  setting  my  foot  on  European  soil, 
it  is  truly  with  an  emotion  of  gratitude  that  I  say  adieu  to 
America  —  of  gratitude,  because  I  have  received  precious,  in 
comparable  teachings;  of  gratitude,  because  I  feel  that  France 
is  loved  there;  of  gratitude,  finally,  because  it  exists,  and  its 
mere  existence  represents  for  the  future  of  civilization  an 
immense  possibility. 

In  this  last  night,  and  within  a  few  hours  of  Liverpool,  all 
the  ideas  gathered  in  those  long  months  of  exile  come  back 
and  stir  me  again  most  deeply.  Toward  five  o'clock,  a  soft, 
vague  vapor  having  risen,  all  the  outlines  of  the  coast  began 
to  melt  and  sink  away.  I  saw  but  the  water,  dead  and  green, 


424  OUTRE-MER 

green  with  a  greenness  as  of  emerald  and  milk.  A  gentle 
shivering  ripple  ran  over  the  water  as  the  steamer  advanced. 
Low  in  the  sky  was  a  large,  broad  band  of  mauve,  and  in  that 
mauve  was  the  birth  of  a  rainbow,  the  base  formed  on  a  point 
of  light  cast  —  toward  where?  The  sun,  which  was  setting 
yonder,  threw  its  rays  on  the  level  of  the  water  and  struck 
straight  upon  a  light-ship  painted  red,  which  seemed  aflame. 
A  sailing  vessel  was  approaching,  which  took  such  dark  — 
nay,  quite  black  —  shades,  that  it  seemed  a  mourning  boat, 
as  it  glided  onward,  with  a  motion  tenderly  and  peacefully 
funereal.  It  was  a  dream  landscape,  such  as  we  meet  in  this 
fairy-like  climate,  a  landscape  in  which  one  might  expect  to 
see  the  feet  of  the  Saviour,  of  the  celestial  Friend,  walking 
toward  us,  toward  the  humble  men  whose  hearts  the  beauty  of 
such  evenings  at  once  pierces  and  overwhelms.  I  turned  to 
the  other  side,  and  I  saw  the  sun  about  to  die.  It  was  red, 
like  flowing  blood,  hemmed  in  with  black  —  the  black  of  night, 
the  night  which  pressed  upon  it,  and  engulfed  without  being 
lightened  by  it. 

A  bar  extended  across  it.  Then  it  diminished  until  it  ceased 
to  be,  in  that  darkness  of  the  sky  in  which  there  brooded  over 
a  red-brown  sea  nothing  but  a  purple  point  which  flickered 
out.  Then  there  remained  nothing  but  the  clouds,  just  as  we 
imagine  sometimes,  in  these  days  of  threatening  wars  and  revo 
lutions,  that  other  clouds,  those  of  a  new  barbarism,  are  about 
to  veil  the  little  point  of  light  which  is  civilization.  And  here 
I  began  to  consider  over  again,  in  thought,  the  course  which 
the  steamer  had  just  travelled  across  the  ocean.  I  said  to  my 
self  that  back  yonder,  at  this  same  hour,  that  sun  was  at  the 
summit  of  the  sky,  half  way  in  its  course,  lighting  the  towns, 
the  country,  an  entire  universe.  The  harbor  of  New  York 
appeared  to  me  in  its  enormous  activity,  then  the  avenues  and 
the  crowds  of  passers-by.  I  saw  again  in  a  flash  Boston,  Phila 
delphia,  Baltimore,  Chicago,  St.  Paul,  Minneapolis,  so  many 


HOMEWARD  425 

cities  in  which  I  scarcely  stopped,  yet  in  which  I  sojourned 
long  enough  for  their  names  to  conjure  up  vivid  pictures;  and 
the  consciousness  that  that  other  world  exists  beside  ours,  that 
humanity  has  yonder  so  colossal  a  field  of  experiment  in  which 
to  continue  its  work,  fills  me  with  a  sort  of  mysterious  exalta 
tion,  as  though  an  act  of  faith  in  human  will  had  declared  itself 
in  me,  almost  in  spite  of  myself,  and  I  opened  my  heart  quite 
fully  to  this  great  breath  of  courage  and  hope  that  has  come 
to  me  from  "  outre-mer." 


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